Screen Machine

Review: From U-Matic to Youtube: Indigenous film and video symposium

Editor’s Note: In the interests of full disclosure, we wish to acknowledge that the author of this report, Lauren, is a student in Monash University’s Film & Television Studies department, which organised this symposium; the author had no organisational role in the symposium itself, however.

“From U-Matic to Youtube: Celebrating Three Decades of Indigenous Community Filmmaking and Video”, a symposium held at ACMI from 8-9 June 2010, was a wonderful meshing of storytelling, documentary and discussion. The basis for the conference was the DVD launch of Two Laws, a watershed documentary made in 1981 by the Borroloola Indigenous community with assistance from Alessandro Cavadini and Carolyn Strachan. From this, the conversation centred around how films from the Borroloola community and a select number of notable Indigenous filmmakers had evolved since the release of Two Laws.

As with all academic conferences, there is often a distinct vibe or unsaid theme. I always enjoy taking quiet note of whispered conversations held by various attendees. In the case of this symposium, the undeniable theme was death. Its presence haunted the symposium – through the passing of an elder (which meant that the conference delegates from Borroloola could not attend); the regular reminder to Indigenous peoples at the beginning of each film that it may contain voices or images of the dead; John Bradley’s reminder that the language of the Borroloola people would soon be lost forever; and filmmaker Romaine Moreton’s sad reflection on her mentor’s death. From all this, it became clear that death has such a pervading presence in Indigenous culture because once a person dies their stories, traditions, memories and language usually die with them.

I discovered many excellent films, including Aeroplane Dance (Trevor Graham 1994), Two Bob Mermaid (Darlene Johnson 1996) and The Farm (Romaine Moreton 2009). The innovative combination of realism, storytelling and fiction in these films stems partly from Two Laws, a documentary of which Jill Godmilow contends: “[from] the mix of creativity and honesty of both cultures comes the clarity of purpose and the choice of content and forms that produced a new kind of documentary cinema …”

These three films were lighthearted but sensitive to the issues at hand. Aeroplane Dance was a compelling story about an American fighter plane crashing near the Borroloola area during World War II. The film adapted the reflective, self-conscious style of Two Laws to show insight into the Borroloola people’s response to the lone survivor of the crash. Juxtaposed with this was an account of the pilot’s struggles, adapted from the official report and filmed in a Hollywood B-movie/noir aesthetic. It was a wonderfully innovative approach to the meshing of two cultures’ understandings of death, survival and storytelling.

Two Bob Mermaid and The Farm were films based on the real-life experiences of women (Darlene Johnson and Romaine Moreton respectively) growing up as adolescents in a marginalising, race-centred society. Both explored the experiences of tension, acceptance, belonging and family. Although neither film was produced for the cinema screen, they projected beautifully and exposed the richness of the footage – the composition of shots, framing and colourful mise-en-scène. In this sense, the symposium was a great combination of screening and discussion – a rare but valuable tool that should be more readily adopted by conferences in future.

There were many heated discussions about the politics of the event. Some members were brave enough to voice their opinions over the microphone. Issues were varied, but included the lack of funding, distribution and critical attention in relation to Indigenous work. These are valid arguments, the necessity of which were made especially evident by the innovative aesthetics of many of the films screened at the symposium. The motivation of the filmmakers present, it seemed, was to have films produced and released beyond the usual televisual outlets of SBS and the ABC. Indeed, “U-Matic to Youtube” revealed just how much more diverse Australian cinema would be if if this kind of work were regularly and enthusiastically projected on our big cinema screens.

Lauren is a PhD student in Film & Television studies at Monash University, specialising in the representation of pregnancy in cinema.

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