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Dream time for our film-makers

Some of Australia's finest film directors are scrambling to make films of Aboriginal stories. And now many predict the ailing local film industry could be in for an Aboriginal-led recovery. Sue Williams reports.

28 January 2001 - The announcement was quite unexpected. Phil Noyce, the film-maker who made his fortune with 12 years of Hollywood blockbusters such as The Bone Collector with Denzel Washington and Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger with Harrison Ford, was returning home to make a small film about the stolen generation.

Just as the significance of that sank in, there was another shock. Fred Schepisi, the man behind The Russia House with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, IQ with Tim Robbins and Meg Ryan and Roxanne with Steve Martin, had also felt the call to return, this time to make a $10 million movie about an Aboriginal WWII fighter pilot.

And within a matter of days a third revered director joined the black gold rush. Bill Bennett, of Kiss or Kill fame and Two If By Sea with Sandra Bullock and Denis Leary, declared he too was to make a new film, this time about Bennelong, the Aborigine captured by Governor Phillip in an attempt to "civilise a black".

Add those to the growing bank of films about Aboriginal issues all about to be released, and suddenly it looks like the industry's future recovery rests fair and square upon the shoulders of black Australians - and everyone else's readiness to be their audience.

Yet early indicators are already good. Many of the new films are being invited to overseas festivals, and publicity about the treatment of Aboriginal people during the Olympics has sparked an interest worldwide in their lives. At home, they're bound to excite their fair share of controversy.

For the subjects are enormously varied, ranging from Noyce's Rabbit Proof Fence, about stolen girls, Yolngu Boy about children growing up in the outback, Serenades's 19th century missionaries epic, the interaction between black and white AFL players in Deadly, Unna? and Bennett's historic timepiece.

"It's time for the reputation of Australian films to be resuscitated overseas," said Mark Lazarus, the producer of Deadly, Unna? and the man who was instrumental in Rabbit Proof Fence being made by Ocean Pictures.

"We haven't had a big hit since Muriel's Wedding and Priscilla. But with these movies, there's already a great deal of interest in the marketplace.

We could well end up seeing a bit of a renaissance of the kind of vibe of the Australian cinema of the 70s."

Already, US audiences have gone wild over Yolngu Boy, which has just been shown at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, and opens at home in March.

A sale to the notoriously tough Hollywood market now seems certain.

"A lot of films about Aboriginal issues haven't worked at the box office, but we believe this one will," said executive producer Patricia Edgar, who's also the head of the Australian Children's Television Foundation.

"This shows life from an Aboriginal perspective, rather than from others looking in, so for a lot of Australians, it will be like going to another country. I think we're ready now to see this kind of film."

There's also a great deal of excitement over the release later this year of Rabbit Proof Fence. With Noyce's name attached, it's likely to attract mass mainstream audiences in the US and UK as well as in Australia to its true tale of three Aboriginal girls who are forcibly taken from their outback families in 1931 to be trained as domestic servants.

They escape and embark on an epic 2,000km journey to get back home with the authorities pursuing them all the way.

The first of the big batch of Aboriginal films to open this year is Serenades, which is released in Sydney next month, about an Aboriginal woman sold to a visiting Afghan trader off a mission in the outback. Starring unknown Alice Haines and local heart-throb Aden Young, it also carries high hopes for overseas sales.

Director Mojgan Khadem says there's a steady recognition in Australia that Aboriginal people are a great treasure of the country which has, until now, been largely hidden.

"Now it's a new millennium and people are now giving more time and interest to the problems that have occurred, to the suffering of the Aboriginal community," Khadem said. "I think that is fantastic that is happening.

"We're ready to learn about them, and move forward as a nation."

A recent Australian Film Commission (AFC) report warned that the future looked bleak for Australian movies, with too little investment in development, not enough cash going into making local films and the number of movies being made falling - just 31 last year compared to 41 the year before.

The surge in the number of films featuring Aboriginal people or subjects involving them, however, could see the trend bucked for the future.

AFC indigenous unit manager Sally Riley said there were still a number of films in the wings being developed. A major feature film, Beneath Clouds, made by one of Australia's few Aboriginal film-makers, Ivan Sen, is going into pre-production in a week's time.

In addition, a collection of 50-minute movies is set to go into production later this year.

"There is a groundswell at the moment in Australia in support of indigenous people and issues," Riley said. "That creates the opportunity for us to tell our own stories.

"I think a lot of those big stories are still untold, and with so much interest being expressed in them, I think there are going to be big audiences for these films."

Deadly, Unna?, based on the prize-winning novel, starts shooting in May, and development work on Bennelong has just started. Directed by Bennett, and written by Nick Enright, who received an Oscar nomination for Lorenzo's Oil, it's about the relationship between Governor Phillip and Bennelong, who was being groomed to become an ambassador between the two cultures.

Angela Martin, an educator in indigenous arts at the Art Gallery of NSW and the author of the stirring new book Beyond Duck River, about three generations of an Aboriginal family growing up in Sydney, says the timing of the movies is perfect to capture a renewed interest in Aboriginal Australia.

"Every day now, more and more people come forward interested in finding out about Aboriginal art and culture," Martin said. "They really want to know.

"With these films, if the stories are good, people will want to watch them. If they explore universal themes with an Aboriginal theme woven through subtly, they'll really work. People are very eager to find out more about Aboriginal people, in a non-threatening atmosphere."

The sudden rash of movies has also meant great opportunities for Aboriginal crews and actors, who are often complete unknowns, hand-picked after months of travelling around remote communities to find fresh talent.

"As Australian film-makers, we have to supply the world with something they're not getting in their regular film diet," Lazarus said. "If they're genre films, like thrillers, they're competing against films made with big Hollywood names and much bigger budgets.

"But showcasing Aboriginal stories and Australian landscapes is something quite different and unique to us. Of course, at the end of the day, these films' success depends on their quality, whether they're entertaining and exciting, but if they're good enough, they'll do well."

Clip from The Sun-Herald

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