Celluloid Subjects to Digital Directors. Jennifer Debenham

aspects of filmmaking and distribution rights to name just a few. In other words, they have “researched back” the film industry, using and defining it to meet their needs and desires. The degree of self-determination achieved to date strengthens the platforms from which serious challenges to colonial “ideological constructions of the Other” can be propelled.¹¹ Documentary film production by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is but one area where these challenges may originate. The activities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander filmmakers have re-shaped Aboriginality in ways that successfully challenge previous colonial constructions and imaginations about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives.

      Stages of the Journey

The extended timescale helps to arrange and accumulate the numerous small fragments of change. Collected piece by piece they provide a fuller picture about how the production of documentary films had a role to play in the way Aboriginal people were represented on documentary film. It illuminates the discourses documentary films kindled about how the public and governments perceived Aboriginal peoples. The timescale helps us to appreciate shifts in documentary film production values when Aboriginal people began to control more aspects of documentary film making from the 1970s. The journey of how these values developed provide a unique way of assessing the social and technological impacts related to the films selected. The ability to collect in one volume a study about the imperceptible changes taking place – often missed when the inquiry focuses upon the works for example, of an individual filmmaker or the productions from a single institution – is a fresh way of approaching the important role played by documentary film production and the genre’s influence on ←6 | 7→the human networks of societies and identity formation. Using the films as periodic markers enables a panoramic view that asks us to consider the inescapable consequences of our present environment.¹²

      The structure of the book follows a lineal chronological time, ordering the films according to their production dates with the exception of two films arranged thematically into the sections that best reflect their ideological premise. This concession also acknowledges the unevenness of these changes. Arranging the films in this way makes it easier to identify shifts, demonstrating how the representation of Aboriginal people corresponded to shifts in scientific and anthropological practice alongside improvements in film stock and camera technologies.

      Sectioning the time line is determined with some consideration of the development of anthropological practices during the twentieth century. In the first part, “Exotic Subjects, 1901–1966”, the examination of prominent ideas and attitudes of the period in relation to Aboriginal peoples is represented in four documentary films: Aboriginal Life in Central Australia (1901); Life in Central Australia (1931); Aborigines of the Sea Coast (1950) and Desert People (1966). The technological changes in film and camera technology between these films are significant but the ideological premise on which they were conceptualised remained static; the filmmakers represent Aboriginal peoples as a “stone age” or timeless people in the ethnographic present, as people from “deep history” but who were also a “dying race”.

The term “deep history” is defined as an inter-disciplinary approach to studying the human past. It draws from an array of disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, primatology, genetics and linguistics to piece together a more comprehensive over-arching narrative about the beginnings of humans. The ideology behind the films in this part draws on the premise of finding the authentic Aborigine, a mythic identity formed in the imagination of people of European descent about Indigenous populations.¹³ ←7 | 8→The films in Part I represent Aboriginal peoples as relics from an ancient pristine past where their cultural authenticity bound them permanently to the deep past; it helped view their extinction as a fait accompli. For many Anglo Australians the belief in the inevitable extinction of Aboriginal peoples rationalised their social and political marginalisation from mainstream Australia, including the destruction and dispossession of their lands and culture. Langton’s idea that Aboriginality is not fixed, creates a tension between this fluidity and the embedded timelessness of the “authentic” Aboriginal visualised in the films. This timelessness is challenged in the following sections.

      In Part II, “Voices for Change, 1957–1972”, the three films Warburton Aborigines (1957), Change At Groote (1968), and Ningla-A-Na (1972) foreground the growing overt agency of Aboriginal people as political actors in their quest for recognition and identity. As political advocacy films rather than ethnographic films, they demonstrate the first glimmers of shifting non-Aboriginal views about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; the imperceptible changes that signalled the beginning of an acknowledgement that they are survivors rather than destined for extinction. In these early filmic documents, the sound of Aboriginal voices was a relatively new feature in documentary films. Heralded by developments in film sound technologies as well as an interest in hearing the views of Aboriginal people. The inclusion of their voices relating their experiences under government assimilation policies alert us to the first signs of the formation of a more militant Aboriginal activism.

      The third part, “Counting the Cost, 1978–1987”, investigates three films: My Survival As An Aboriginal (1978); Lousy Little Sixpence (1983); and Link-Up Diary (1987). Each represents the stories told by Aboriginal people on film about the painful consequences of families torn apart by the policies of assimilation and acts of dispossession. The films represent a major shift from the ethnographic films of Part I and the political films of Part II. Rather, the films provide intimate portraits of Aboriginal survival and place the experiences of Aboriginal people within a historical context.

      The fourth part, “Digital Directors, 2002–2017”, explores two films: Whispering in Our Hearts: The Mowla Bluff Massacre (2002) and Willaberta Jack (2007). Made by two Aboriginal filmmakers in their own ←8 | 9→communities, the films show how they predominately control the filmmaking process from the selection of the stories including their production and distribution. The historical incidents they portray underline the critical importance of an Aboriginal perspective to understanding Australia’s past.

      Bookending the discussions of the films, Chapter 13 provides an overview of four films screened at the Sydney Film Festival in 2017. For the first time a documentary film opened the festival. That it was also made by one of Australia’s most talented Aboriginal filmmakers, Warwick Thornton, underlines the value now attributed to documentary films made by Indigenous filmmakers. Promoting the four documentary films screened at the festival was the relatively new free-to-air broadcaster, National Indigenous Television (NITV), an affiliate of Special Broadcasting Services (SBS) who was a major sponsor for funding and distribution networks. Significantly, the increased presence of both NITV and SBS indicates that television, both pay and free-to-air, is a primary carrier for documentary films.

      The exploration of each film considers five aspects that influenced its production; these aspects provide an anchor point in relation to the social, political and scientific context for the film’s production. Firstly, the production dates are important in relation to how and why the film was made and how the audience responded.

      The second aspect demonstrates these considerations are also highly dependent