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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lEmotions flare at Australian Rulesby Garry Maddox
7 March 2002 - Rarely has a new Australian film generated so much emotion. A debate about Australian Rules, a lively drama about a white youth and his Aboriginal best mate who play for a country football team, produced tears, a walk-out and angry accusations about white film-makers taking black stories at the Adelaide Festival yesterday. The film, directed by Paul Goldman, has been the subject of longstanding protests by the Coalition Against Australian Rules. Its members are upset the film dramatises a real-life incident - the shooting death of two Aboriginal youths who broke into a pub in the 1970s. They also believe it invades the privacy of the Aboriginal community at Point Pearce in South Australia, where the shootings took place, includes racist stereotypes and demeans Aboriginal women. When it premiered on Tuesday night, Australian Rules was generally warmly received by the festival audience. Clearly, many saw it as an entertaining and often comic tale about racism and intolerance that rose above the protesters' fears. Based on Phillip Gwynne's book Deadly, Unna?, the film centres on Blacky (played by Nathan Phillips), a white youth playing for the town's Aussie rules team, the team's Aboriginal star player (a sparkling Luke Carroll) and the star's sister (Lisa Flanagan). When the team makes the grand final for the first time in years, the racial currents begin swirling in the town and nearby Aboriginal mission. At the premiere, the controversy surrounding Australian Rules dampened the mood. There was a sense of unease at the cinema - an awkward development at a festival celebrating truth and reconciliation. In a low-key introduction, the festival's director, Sue Nattrass, called for respect for different points of view and acknowledged that certain scenes would offend some members of the Aboriginal community. The unease continued after the film as a professional mediator introduced the film-makers and actors. When Gwynne thanked his family from the stage, there was a cry of "don't forget to thank the people that you made the film about" from the audience. As Goldman spoke about the emotional journey making the film, the mediator wound him up surprisingly quickly. After the screening, a small group of Aboriginal protesters displayed posters saying "Stop the cycle of grief, despair and trauma" and, using a football analogy, described the film as "a push in the back for indigenous people". The tension was even more apparent when the protesters and members of different Aboriginal communities discussed Australian Rules with the film-makers at a seminar. Various people talked about how distressing the film was to the families of the dead youths. As she walked out during the session, a young woman from the community said the film should not have been made because of the way it had stirred things up. "You should have just left it."
David Wilson, from the coalition against the film, attacked white Sydney film-makers who told black stories. "It's not fantasy. It's about a real community and real events." Saying how much he regretted the grief caused by the film, Goldman conceded that consultation with the community had not been good enough. "It's about respect and what that means is that we didn't show enough respect." But he called Australian Rules "unmistakably an anti-racist film". Several audience members - black and white - talked tearfully about the film. An emotional Bridget Ikin, the festival's associate director, said the issue had been very painful. "I've been incredibly distressed by the pain and the sorrow and the offence that the film has caused to the community of Point Pearce. I feel deeply sorry for my role and participation in that." Another film commissioned for the festival, the dramatised documentary Kabbarli, had a far smoother debut. Directed by Andrew Taylor, it's a stylish insight into the legendary ethnographer Daisy Bates, who lived on the fringes of Aboriginal society for almost 30 years. Taylor blends colour with black and white images, archival footage with dramatised scenes in a portrait of a true eccentric. Kabbarli features crisp performances by Lynne Murphy as Bates and Mary Regan as journalist Ernestine Hill. Source: The Sydney Morning Herald related links :
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