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Intervention (2008)
Vincent Lamberti/Tangentyere CouncilAn eyewitness account of life under the Intervention for the town-campers of Alice Springs. In the same week as the federal Review into the Northern Territory Intervention is handed down, the screening of this candid documentary offers a rare insight into the daily reality of store cards, alcohol bans and quarantined benefits. "Intervention" is the culmination of 40 in-depth interviews with people experiencing the Intervention first-hand.
Vincent Lamberti is a filmmaker and composer. Originally from Melbourne he grew up bi-culturally and bi-lingually, his home life characterised by his southern Italian roots while learning to be an 'Australian' at school. Since 2005 Vincent has been living in Alice Springs, and though his vocation takes him around Australia, he focuses primarily on his work with Town Camp communities. He also collaborates with filmmaker David Vadiveloo as a member of the Community Prophets team, last year working in Aurukun, Cape York.
As a director he has recently completed documentary films exploring the impacts of the 2007 Intervention and the legacy of the 1967 Referendum, both projects in collaboration with a research team made up of town camp residents.
Island Home Country (2008)
Jeni Thornley, Anandi FilmsIsland Home Country is a one-hour cine-essay about Australia's colonised history and how it impacts into the present. Filming with her white Tasmanian family, newcomer Australians and First Australians, the filmmaker explores her personal responsibility as a 'newcomer' Australian to the First Australians and to 'country.' Island Home Country offers insights into how various individuals reckon with the traumatic legacies of British colonialism and its race based policies. It is a timely document in the historic year of the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations.
Island Home Country encourages all Australians to acknowledge the First Australians, to care for country and to work together in a process of de-colonisation. The film's consultative and process based way of working with members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community (informed by Indigenous Protocols) suggests an evolving shift in Australian history narratives: from the frontier wars black 'v' white paradigm, to a more complex one of diverse peoples working through historical trauma together. The 6 DVD chapters: Amnesia, Possession, Memory, Mourning, Encounter and Reckoning convey the movement of the protocols process that the filmmaker worked with including Respect, Aboriginal Control, Communication, Consultation and Consent and Proper Returns.
Jeni Thornley lectures (p/t) in Issues in Documentary (UTS) focusing on the history of documentary, changing forms and ethics. She is also a documentary filmmaker completing Island Home Country as a doctorate (Communications, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, UTS), and works in the film industry as a writer, consultant script editor, researcher and director and as a film valuer for film archives and the Australian government’s Cultural Gifts Program.
Jeni is also presenting a paper at the Conference: 'Indigenous Protocols process and the instability of whiteness in the making of Island Home Country, a documentary film about Tasmania's racialised history.' Check the conference program for details.
Australian Teachers of Media have produced a Study Guide on the film, which will be available soon. For further information see:
www.jenithornley.com
www.theeducationshop.com.au
Wedding Sari Showdown (2005-2007)
Kylie Boltin, Ronin FilmsWedding Sari Showdown, parts 1 & 2 is an award winning observational documentary series (52 minutes). It follows two young lovers, Ramona and Anurag as they struggle to maintain their relationship and their independence against the pressure of family obligations and cultural expectations.
PART 1: Ramona is 27 when she falls in love with Anurag, from one of the wealthiest merchant families in Rajasthan. They want to marry quickly but Ramona's parents, a professional couple who migrated to Australia in 1971 from the Punjab, will not agree to the match. At the same time, in Rajasthan, Anurag's family are furious. They had expected to arrange a suitable bride for their eldest son and heir.
Despite their objections, Ramona and Anurag marry anyway, secretly, in a Melbourne registry office. In Wedding Sari Showdown, to placate both families, Ramona and Anu must go through it all again - not one wedding this time but two! In Melbourne, a modest Punjabi Sikh wedding for 250 guests and in India, a massively expensive spectacle for 2000 people from the Marwari community.
PART 2: Three years after they defied their families by eloping secretly in a Melbourne registry office — and then 'marrying' twice more in a modest Sikh ceremony and then an elaborate Hindu ceremony in Rajasthan —Ramona and Anurag are expecting their first child. A child who will be both Sikh-Australian and Marwari; a child who will belong in two worlds. But while Ramona is prepared to welcome her mother-in-law into her Melbourne home – indefinitely — prior to the birth and to accept 'Mummy's' advice on all things baby, there is a limit to how far she will acquiesce and relinquish power – this is her first baby after all – and she has very definite views of her own. That is, until she gets to India…
Kylie Boltin is an independent writer and filmmaker and regular contributor to the SBS Online Movie show site. She has a Masters of Arts by research (Creative writing) from the University of Melbourne and is a current PhD Candidate in the Department of Creative Media (Film and TV) at RMIT where she lectures in the MCM program.
For more information see www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/2434429862.html