Patterns of attachment to the land

Hetti Perkins' article, Patterns of attachment to the land (The Australian May 30, 2013)  is worth reading. It is an edited extract  from the publication accompanying My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori's Dibirdibi Country (2008)

The sentient power of country and the spirits who reside within it is not to be underestimated. Still today, trespassing on another's country is a reckless and dangerous act. It is customary in many parts of Australia to be formally "introduced" to country by traditional custodians, which can take the form of an exchange of sweat or a baptismal dousing so the land will accept or sense one as a countryman or woman and not make the newcomer sick. Almost invariably, senior community members will walk ahead at a special site, calling to their ancestral spirits so they will recognise and not harm the visitors.

It is in this context that the "welcome to country" has evolved; and it is a culturally appropriate means of brokering a social engagement with another community by formally recognising their ties to their homelands in the contemporary world.

It is a matter of no small concern that there has been the inevitable invasion of anti-political correctness creeping into this profoundly symbolic gesture of respect, particularly in areas where the Western legal criteria used to determine native title rights dispossess the traditional custodians from any other form of public recognition. The criticism of federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that the protocol is merely a "genuflection to political correctness" could be applied equally to singing the national anthem. How many Australians know all the words of the anthem, and how many really believe that we are a nation "young and free"? 
The welcome is an appropriate way of reiterating the message that Australia is home to the oldest continuous cultural tradition in the world, as a counterpoint to the endless parade of men on horses immortalised in bronze that line our city streets.

Remembering Pa on Anzac Day.

Here is our, Pa Tom,  mum's dad. He was a gunner in World War 1. Here he is, so young. I am remembering him this Anzac Day- and all he went through. His asthma was really bad when he came back from the Front. Some said it was the mustard gas. He died of an asthma attack early one morning in Invermay, Launceston Tasmania, in 1956. When we were little kids he used to whisper , "run up to the shops and buy a packet of fags for your poor old Pa, but don't tell Nan". He would press the coins into my hand, and off we would trot; how  strange I felt - on  this secret mission.

Our Pa

I never march on Anzac Day. I feel so strange about it all. I just can't relate to nationalism, patriotism or war. The only time I ever went to an Anzac Day March was when we women marched under a banner: "In memory of all women of all countries, raped in all wars."   I think it was around 1981. I filmed it on super 8 – the women's faces – such gravitas and dignity. They-we marched straight into the waiting police paddy wagons;  the organisors wouldn't give permission to the women to march under that banner. The great unspoken of war. 

Ps This photo is not the Sydney 1981 Anzac Day March....and I have no idea who the red circled person is!

remembering mumirimina

Today someone called ("unknown") commented on a 2011 post I wrote: "save the mumirimina-kutalayna heritage" along the Jordan River, Tasmania. I find it very moving and would like to share it. We can also "remember them" and acknowledge that their descendants "walk where they once walked" and it is their country.

ya pulingina milaythina mana mapalitu
mumirimina laykara milaythina mulaka tara
raytji mulaka mumirimina
mumirimina mapali krakapaka laykara
krakapaka milaythina nika ta
waranta takara milaythina nara takara
waranta putiya nayri
nara laymi krakapaka waranta tu manta waranta tunapri nara.

Greetings to all of you here on our land
It was here that the Mumirimina people hunted kangaroo all over their lands
It was that the white men hunted the Mumirimina
Many Mumirimina died as they ran
Died here on their lands
We walk where they once walked
And their absence saddens us
But they will never be dead for us as long as we remember them.

This is the eulogy of the Risdon Cove Massacre of 1804 where Tasmanian Aborigines were killed in an encounter with British soldiers. Greg Lehman says, "Regardless of the debate over how many were killed, it certainly constitutes Tasmania’s first massacre. But was it simply a regrettable over-reaction to the accidental appearance of a hunting party? Or was it something much more tragic?" His (2006) article is entitled,  Two Thousand Generations of Place-making.

Putuparri Tom Lawford by Nicole Ma

Putuparri Tom Lawford by Nicole Ma

This film Putuparri  is in process and raising money via crowd source funding site  Pozible.
Support this film now; you can  make a donation and receive a DVD of the finished film.
 But hurry....52 hours only left on pozible!

"Ten years in the making, Putuparri is a compelling feature length documentary about an extraordinary 42 year old Wangakjunga man living in Fitzroy Crossing. Located in the remote Kimberley region of north western Australia, Putuparri Tom Lawford lives a two way life - traditional and contemporary".

Manu Tutura by Barry Barclay

I am only beginning to get to know something of Barry Barclay's significant contribution to documentary film in New Zealand and his notion of 'Fourth Cinema', described by Stuart Murray in his book: Images of Dignity: Barry Barclay and Fourth Cinema as:

"An umbrella term referring to the multiple forms of Indigenous cinemas that operate at local, national and international levels, Fourth Cinema is primarily guided by the desire to provide the conditions for the expression of Indigenous voices and ways of seeing... Barclay's mode of practice insists upon the importance of linking cultural production to the community from which it emerges.

I am currently reading Barclay's book Mana Tuturu: Maori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights (Auckland University Press, 2005). Part One, 'Before the Beginning' takes an extraordinary perspective –  Barclay imagines 'what if' Lieutenant James Cook and his Endeavour crew arrived with a film camera and started 'shooting' documentary footage on the west side of the Turanga River that October day in 1769 on Rongowhakata lands. Barclay's way of thinking about The British Crown's assumption that all land belonged to the Crown (for its taking), turns the whole story of colonial possession around and makes us think deeply about the way any of us might use 'camera' - in any situation. It accords with my view that the the kind of deep philosophical thinking by Indigenous filmmakers around 'filming people' has something very profound to teach all of us.

The ethnography of compassion

Recently I went to Vietnam to  the inaugural International Anthropological Film Festival in Ho Chi Minh City. Realtime (Issue 13, 2013) has just published my review of that Festival: The Ethnography of Compassion

The drawing is from We Want (U) to Know (2011) by Ella Pugliese (Italy) and Nou Va (Cambodia). This participatory documentary was created with survivors of the Khmer Rouge period. The intended audience is Cambodian, and the film has been used over the last couple of years by NGO's and outreach programs to teach villagers about the Khmer Rouge regime and about the country's ongoing Khmer Rouge tribunal. 

Produced around the time of the Tribunal, amidst the painful process of remembering, the film reveals its own methods of storytelling and re-enactment, along with the potency of the children filming their elders. These participatory methods become part of a restorative justice process. The film develops as a work of mourning—a catalyst to transformative emotional change. Drawing, painting and working through trauma with re-enactments were part of the filmmakers process with the villagers.

The energy of cultural exchange and shared consciousness is a significant quality that visual ethnography offers the documentary tradition. It is also a mode of filmmaking with a strong foundation in Vietnam and in its tertiary education. Vietnamese visual ethnographers are making films from perspectives within their own culture, not as observers representing ‘the other’ —perhaps as a consequence of having achieved liberation from French and American colonisation. Also, it is not surprising that many of the films are working through complex issues around tradition and modernity given the largely agrarian population and its multi-ethnicity—with over 50 distinct groups, each with its own language and cultural heritage. I appreciated many of the films and the engaged discussions that took place around them. 

Filmmaker Tu Thi Thu Hang participated in many of the discussions and she often shared deeply about Vietnamese history and events that had affected her family in the immediate post war period. Tu Thi Thu Hang  structures her recent film, The Old Man Who Sells Bananas (2012), so that the audience starts out with ‘her’ mis-perception of the Old Man. 

We see him as a victim too—he seems poor, elderly and abandoned. Skillfully filming with him over one and a half years Hang draws us closer into this man’s life, step by step—from lone individual to family man, to respected wise elder of the village with his Confucian ethics and responsibilities. In discussion the filmmaker describes her process: “Now I have a completely different way of looking at him.” (And so do we). “He is the ‘last man’ who lived in a previous epoch. In his 84 years he has lived through the French and American occupation, and liberation. He has passed through the main eras of Vietnamese history. He has applied traditional wisdom to develop what is an ethical way to live.” 

Michael Renov, documentary film scholar, refers to the '5th tendency' of documentary as 'the ethical', in "What’s at stake for the documentary enterprise? 

I think that the ethical in itself. . . has a sort of functioning dimension, and it is also glued to this notion of a common desire or impulse: an ethical impulse, that one can see as an underlying and consistent theme that cross the history of documentary. How do I. . . what is my relationship with this other? What do I mean to that person, what does that person mean to me, what’s at stake in representing others?

So I think Renov's finely tuned insight that 'the ethical' is fundamental to documentary is so relevant - not only to today- but to the whole history of documentary. The 'ethical'  is the frame by which we both make and study documentary.

There is a ticking time bomb in the remote economic heart of the nation

On a visit to Broome (and south of Broome) I witnessed first hand the kinds of inequities that Marcia Langton discusses in her Griffith review essay The Resource Curse (Edition 28, Still the Lucky Country). I was shocked to see the rapacious 'resort tourist' development in Broome, the fast escalating rents and house prices and the seeming marginalisation of many Aboriginal people from access to any social or economic benefits from the 'boom'. The issues are systemic and huge. I don't always agree with what I perceive as Langton's sometimes 'pro-mining' stance, but in this essay she gets to the heart of the many contradictions in the continuing colonisation of Aboriginal lands.

"The effects of the current resource curse in the Pilbara are reminiscent of the mining boom in the 1960s. Aborigines were the intended losers then; now all locals, regardless of background, are losers if they do not work in the industry. My question is this: are there any policies to counter the growing disparities in income, living conditions and opportunity in the mining provinces?....The mining regions are the source of enormous revenue, yet their residents are disadvantaged and deprived of services...the traditional owners of the land are the most disadvantaged living upon it....many Aboriginal groups were not opposed to mining but concerned about racist and inequitable practices being replicated in new ventures. What the groups wanted was guaranteed recognition of their inherent rights and interests, and acceptable terms for cultural, social and economic futures".

My Survival as an Aboriginal

Dear Martha

How great to see Essie Coffey's  film  My Survival as an Aboriginal  (1978) last night on NITV (and all the other great films screening on NITV on Survival Day yesterday! 

And good on you Martha (Ansara...and others) for making this film with Essie back then! Thirty- five years ago! I think I appreciate the film much more now, in 2013,  than when I first saw it in 1978.  I love the pace of the film and Essie's narration. I love the fridge sequence. I always did! And I love the sequence where Essie introduces all her family to us....and the way you film them as they come out the front door of the house and each person says hello. Essie's love of country and family is strong- as is her sadness....

The ongoing issues of colonialism and dispossession raised by Coffey continue to affect Indigenous peoples today. 'My Survival as an Aboriginal', though a call to justice, is also tempered with beauty, and the audience is allowed to glimpse the private world of Essie Coffey and the people of Brewarrina. Coffey is very strong in her fight for justice, and equally committed to ensuring that the next generation are taught cultural knowledge as a means of ensuring an identity invested in the ongoing relationship to land.  Romaine Moreton, Curator's Notes, Australian Screen

So I am encouraging any reader of this blog to watch this film. It is as relevant to day as when it was made. Purchase a DVD of My Survival at Ballad Films and visit Australian Screen, which, along with Moreton's curator's notes on My Survival  also has a good essay called :  A Short History of Indigenous Filmmaking.

my recent thinking on documentary @conferences; film reviews

 Visible Evidence Conference,  ANU (December 2012) –  my presentation: Documentary, the database and the global archive of the internet: implications for teaching documentary film history.

This paper is exploratory – a map to something I am working on in more depth. The converging digital and online media era provokes questions on how to approach the study and teaching of documentary history. How do we contextualize such rapidly evolving media–within or alongside the field of documentary?  Perhaps the case for a digitally based – experimental practice of documentary making, writing and critical thinking – exemplified by Chris Marker, indicates a way through this era; so acknowledging Marker’s passing: ‘Cat – wherever you are – peace be with you'.

My paper at the Film and History Conference: The politics and poetics of subversion: documentary film-making and the decolonization of Tasmanian history. In this paper I discuss several films (and images) that have been produced amidst the turbulent site of Tasmania’s past and present: The Last Tasmanian (1978) Blackman’s Houses (1993), First Australians, Portrait of a Distant Land, and my own documentary Island Home Country – all produced in 2008. These films work intertextually and with social and political consequences. I look at the textual strategies the filmmakers and artists have used – their politics and poetics, and my own – to explore how filmmaking and art practice can make potent contributions to processes of decolonization.

Here is my review of the recent book on Hungarian filmmaker Peter Forgacs; its in the latest issue of 'Screening the Past': Cinema’s Alchemist: The Films of Péter Forgács. In this rich and detailed book various contributors call him by different names: artist-archivist, scribe, witness, poet, cinema alchemist. His body of work is so extensive, innovating across a diversity of mediums and forms, that the term filmmaker only partly suits him. Given the unstable and rapidly changing landscape of digital-documentary filmmaking, this latest Visible Evidence Series (#25) on Forgács and his work is very timely.

Another recent review  I have done is this book Australian Documentary: History, Practices and Genres by Trish FitzSimons, Pat Laughren and Dugald Williamson Cambridge UP, 2011). It's in Metro Magazine, Issue 173,  2012  (PDF at this link).

Australian Documentary is an insightful and generous book. It offers back to the community of practitioners and broader audiences a text rich with scholarship, reflecting on ‘more than a century of practice’.  Readers can engage with an Australian documentary tradition in local, national and international contexts. We can connect with the lineage of films and the negotiated labour of producing them, and gain a strong sense of the capacity of documentary to be transformed and renewed. There is much pleasure in sensing this regenerative process.