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English
Description
This observational documentary follows an episode in the routine life on Collum Collum cattle-station in northern New South Wales. But, as the filmmaker notes, its a story that could have occurred anywhere. The film follows the attempts by Sunny Bancroft and other men in the Collum Collum Aboriginal community to remove a failed engine from a car and replace it with a refurbished engine from another car. Its a familiar rural task where the expectation...
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English
Description
Djunawunya, Arnhem Land, east of the town of Maningrida, July 1978. Frank Gurrmanamana is responsible for preparing the final mortuary ceremonies for his brother who had died six years before. The brother had been buried in Maningrida, but now his remains are being brought back to his home country. Central to the ceremonies is Harry Diama, the senior blood-relative of the deceased man, but Harry lives in Maningrida and is pre-occupied with a pending...
3) Yorky Billy
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English
Description
At Ngurgdu (Spring Peak) in the Northern Territory, an area soon to be irrevocably disturbed by uranium mining, 80-year-old William Alderson (known as “Yorky Billy”) reflects on his life in the outback. His father was an Englishman from Yorkshire (hence Yorky’s nickname) who spent 45 years in Australia and “tried everything” – working as a prospector, a railway worker, drover and buffalo hunter. After only 3 years of school, his only son,...
4) Takeover
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Language
English
Description
One of the major works produced by the AIAS Film Unit, this documentary observes the profound effect on an Aboriginal community of political and bureaucratic decisions made far away. Although specific to time and place, the film is timeless and universal in its observations of a conflict between an Indigenous minority and a powerful government. The film presents an insiders view of events that followed an announcement made without warning on 13 March...
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English
Description
This powerful documentary was made by Oomera (Coral) Edwards on Super 8mm film as a training exercise at the (then) Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra. The film surveys the New South Wales policy of taking Aboriginal children from their families and putting them in institutions run by the Aborigines Welfare Board. From 1883 to 1969, this policy deprived generations of children of their Aboriginal identity. Oomera was one of these...
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English
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A film of considerable historic importance, this documentary narrates the emergence of Indigenous broadcast media in Australia, and discusses its role in maintaining Indigenous languages and culture. In the early 1980s, the Federal Government announced that there would be a national satellite (AUSSAT), and encouraged the use of this satellite by Aboriginal peoples in remote areas of central Australia. The ground-swell of concern among Aboriginal communities...
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English
Description
Gordon Smith, head of the Collum Collum Aboriginal Co-operative which operates a cattle station in northern New South Wales, and Sunny Bancroft, the station manager, are negotiating with the Aboriginal Development Corporation in Canberra for a loan. Finance is needed to stock the property with breeding cattle so that the station can become financially independent. The film details the frustrations of negotiating with a distant bureaucracy while,...
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Description
Constructed as a series of vignettes of station life, the film focuses particularly on the relationship between Sunny Bancroft, the station manager, and a 16-year-old trainee, Shane Gordon. The episodes are linked by Sunnys reflections on learning the hard way from experience, and from the lessons taught him by his father. With intertitles to introduce each episode, the film is eloquent in its depiction of Sunnys patient approach to managing his...
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English
Description
Link-Up Diary explores the consequences of the New South Wales governments long-term practice of taking Aboriginal children away from their parents and raising them in “white” environments. The film takes the form of a personal journey by the filmmaker, David MacDougall, as he spends a week on the road with three workers from Link-Up. Link-Up is an Aboriginal organisation founded in 1980 by Oomera (Coral) Edwards, herself taken away from her...
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Language
English
Description
Without narration, and without identification of individual speakers, the film provides an invaluable record of two events which occurred in the final week of January 1977, and which marked “a turning point in legal recognition of Aboriginal rights to land”. The film documents discussions among traditional owners and white officials and legal advisors, at a large gathering at Batchelor, 100km south of Darwin. The first event was the meeting of...
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