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key indigenous australian issues
| home | news lA secret history in the OutbackBy Demetrios Matheou 7 November 2002 - Director Phillip Noyce used his hollywood clout to make a hit film about Aborigines - his film has reopened a fierce debate in Australia about the treatment of Aborigines
That’s all changed. When plans for the latest Ryan film broke down with Ford, Noyce decided to direct his first film in Australia for 12 years. Rabbit-Proof Fence is a move away from the escapism of Noyce’s Hollywood output and back to the serious, thought-provoking film-making of his early career, and such Australian classics as Newsfront and Heatwave. Written by a New Zealander, Christine Olsen, the film has reopened a fierce debate in Australia about the treatment of the Aborigines, with a number of right-wing commentators accusing the film-makers of embellishing the facts. Despite, or because of this, it has been a huge hit, running for 28 weeks and becoming the most successful domestic film in Australia this year. Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the true story of three Aboriginal girls in the Thirties, who were forcibly separated from their families and taken to an orphanage where they were to be trained as domestic staff. The girls escaped, trekking more than 1,000 miles across the Outback to their home by following the rabbit-proof fence that stretched across the state. Their incarceration was part of a long-running Australian government policy, which created the so-called Stolen Generations, thousands of part-Aboriginal women who have never known their families and become detached from their culture. Although his first film, Backroads, was about Aboriginal experience, Noyce admits, at 52, that Rabbit-Proof Fence was still for him “a journey of discovery”, before which he had been unaware of the Stolen Generations. “How could I know? When I grew up, in the Fifties, there was no history about black Australia being taught at schools, no books, no discussion. The history books started with the time of British settlement and everything was from the point of view of white colonisers.” To date very few films have attempted a serious depiction of the black-white conflict in Australia. Among the notable exceptions are Jedda, directed in the Fifties by Charles Chauvel, Fred Schepisi’s The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (1978) and Bruce Beresford’s The Fringe Dwellers (1986). More often, Aborigines are used as comic characters (Crocodile Dundee) or as an excuse for quasi-mystical musings, such as in Peter Weir’s The Last Wave or Nic Roeg’s Walkabout. Whatever the content, Noyce argues, the predominantly white audiences have hardly flocked to see them. “There has never been a lack of films with indigenous content, only a distinct lack of success. Jedda had some similar elements to ours; it was about an Aboriginal girl adopted into a white family. And that was the last time there has been a commercially successful film about Aboriginal experience.” Thus The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, based on the true story of a young Aboriginal who went on a murder spree as a revolt against discrimination, failed to attract white Australians. “It was a much admired and beautiful film,” says Noyce, “I just don’t think the white audience was able to identify with the extreme rage of the character.” It was against this history of apathy that Noyce embarked on Rabbit-Proof Fence. So why does he feel it broke through? “I think the big difference between ours and other Aboriginal films is that our story is really about commonality: a mother’s love and a child’s dependence are universal. So though it was controversial, it was easier for white audiences to accept, because it did not point up the differences in culture so much as the differences in experience.” The film also benefited from the “Hollywood factor” — Noyce bringing to bear his vast experience at making blockbuster hits for LA accountants — and his contacts book. “There was almost as much effort put into selling the film as there was into making it,” the director says. “Otherwise, we knew that we would never break through a belief at every level of the Australian film industry — including the theatre owners — that black films don’t sell, that they’re box-office poison.” The marketing started 18 months before the release of the film, and Noyce persuaded the powerful Miramax to distribute it worldwide. Miramax’s US poster campaign had the tagline: “What if the government kidnapped your daughter? It happened every week in Australia from 1905 to 1971”. The outrage that caused in Australia — and the consequent publicity — could only have boosted the film’s box office. While Noyce believes that white Australians are becoming increasingly prepared to face their history, his film is just one of a number ready to help them do that. This December at the Australian Film Institute Awards all four of the best film nominees — Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Tracker, Australian Rules and Beneath the Clouds — deal seriously with Aboriginal subject-matter. As a director, Noyce seems to have found a new lease of life. His second film to open this month, a version of Graham Greene’s Vietnam novel The Quiet American, starring Michael Caine, is also potent and political. Rabbit-Proof Fence, however, seems to have become something of a personal crusade. “I had not missed Australia, but I realised that I had missed the extraordinary connection to the stories that I was making, that cultural specificity,” he says. “It has been very satisfying to have made a little Australian film and then let this Hollywood machine distribute it.” Source: The London Times
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