Feature article

by Luke Buckmaster

MESSAGE STICKS INDIGENOUS FILM FESTIVAL 2006

Three Indigenous Australian documentaries screened at this year's Message Sticks Film Festival in Sydney, each of them tackling a variety of moral and social issues.  Avril Carruthers was there, pad and pencil in hand, amongst snaking queues and packed out auditoriums. 

Message Sticks Indigenous Film Festival 2006

Friday 12^th May – Sunday 14^th May

Three Indigenous Australian documentaries screened at this year’s Message Sticks Film Festival share common themes, though they’re all approached in unique ways. Twin themes are identity and belonging, highlighted in the stories of individuals who might find themselves adrift without the strong support of family and community. Each documentary tackles issues of individual responsibility and commitment, personal goals and creative expression, and caring for the next generation. Funny, touching, sad and ultimately inspiring as well as deeply instructive on levels that enable understanding and empathy, there is a directness and humanity which is revealed without artifice or sophistication, but fresh and rich in people wisdom.

The Saturday 5pm screening of two documentaries at the Opera House Playhouse was so over-attended, with broad queues snaking out to the Opera House concourse, that the organisers speedily arranged for a second screening back to back with the first. I managed to catch the second screening after queuing for two hours with some good-natured and patient folk, and the films were worth it.

My Brother Vinnie                                                                      

Directed by Stephen McGregor

Written by Aaron Pedersen

Produced by Sarah Bond

As themselves: Aaron Pedersen, Vincent Pedersen, Frances Bond, Sarah Bond

2006; Australian Film Commission, Film & Television Office; documentary; 25 minutes; unr; 4½ stars.

Australian audiences are used to seeing the exceptionally talented Aaron Pedersen on our TV and movie screens. Of late most successfully showcased on TV as Corey in Secret Life of Us, Dr Tony McKinnon in MDA, and Michael Reilly on Water Rats, Aaron appears a natural and charismatic actor. In this documentary which he wrote himself, a side of him that many have not seen is revealed, along with the radiant presence of his brother Vincent, a year younger at 34, who has cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability.

With the help of family snapshots Aaron narrates his and Vincent’s journeys. He goes back into their childhoods together in Alice Springs, in a family of eight children subjected to violence and the trauma of alcoholism, domestic abuse and a succession of foster homes, when Vincent instinctively gave the duty of his care to his older brother. When Aaron opens with the voice-over, “For my brother Vinnie, life is pretty simple. There are two great loves in his life, AFL football, and, well, me.” - he’s also intimating that life as his brother’s keeper, as it unfolded, was not so simple. The documentary unravels as an illustrated personal history, remembering the past and showing the present in a revelatory way. Its steady pace is like a fireside tale, full of good humour and deep feeling.

With disarming honesty, good-heartedness and great affection, Aaron details some of the problems the brothers have faced. He’s enormously grateful to Mum Frances, his partner Sarah Bond’s (this documentary’s producer) mum, who has recently taken much of the burden of looking after Vinnie by inviting him to live in her home. Mum Frances presents as a warm and capable woman who frankly tells what a handful Vinnie is and doesn’t mince words when reminding Vinnie, a smoker, to brush his teeth because his breath stinks. Yet the care and love is evident. Mum Frances, said Aaron in the Q & A after the film, has given them so much: a life, a family and a future.

The winning elements of this documentary are its unashamed truthfulness and its tangible love. Aaron the successful actor does not give himself airs. He says he’s struggled at times to find the gift in his taking on the care of his brother, especially when he was younger, feeling unsupported, angry and resentful. There are moments in the film, for example when the brothers talk about their alcoholic mother and violent father, that unresolved anger surfaces and is not avoided. Another is the moving scene when they venerate their deceased grandmother before travelling back to Alice Springs to place a proper plaque on her grave. A funny clip has Vinnie playing with a football in the background of a Water Rats scene as a case in point when Aaron quips that Vinnie followed him everywhere, even to work.

Aaron freely admits how the support of Mum Frances means Vinnie no longer sees him as the centre of his world. Each has grown in individual ways as a result. The razor’s edge of individual freedom and responsibility, and the need for balance, are very real to Aaron.

Vincent himself is a funny, lovely, open-hearted and loving man who has a killer smile like his brother’s, that can touch anyone who sees him with the compelling need to smile in return. There is a humbling and enlightening effect of this intimate picture of the lives of two very different brothers: the maturing of the older brother was the gift of his taking responsibility for the younger. And yet, without family, the next step of their growth could not have happened. It echoes common themes with other documentaries in this Indigenous Film Festival: that without support of family, and a feeling of belonging and mutual care, love and respect - without this, individual identity and the possibility of positive, creative human expression in one’s life can easily be lost.

La Perouse Panthers                                                            

Directed by Michael Longbottom

2006; Australian Film Commission, Film & Television Office; documentary; 25 minutes; unr; 3½ stars

The ‘La Pa Panthers’, as they are called, epitomise the largely Aboriginal community of the small suburb of La Perouse in south-eastern Sydney, where, it seems, everyone is football-mad. The documentary intersperses brief clips of the rousing excitement of the Panthers’ winning games of the 2005 season, where simple captions of the final scores are triumphant comment enough, with historical perspective from club personalities and stalwarts and some contemporary training sessions.

Impressive, hugely-built coach Chris Sait is the son of former international rugby league player and South Sydney legend Paul Sait. He does most of the commentary, talking warmly about his club of about 10 teams of enthusiastic, mixed race players. Originally, as the director’s father and La Pa elder, Bruce Longbottom reminisces, they were an all-black side. This was back in the 1930’s, and soon the Great Depression united Italians, Greeks and Chinese with Aboriginal and non Aboriginal Australians under a common burden of poverty, where rugby league functioned to take the edge off frustrations and deprivation. That tradition of inter-racial acceptance and common goals has continued with footie serving as a model for discipline and commitment, not to say satisfaction, pride and exhilaration, for many a La Pa boy who might otherwise perhaps default into crime. It’s obviously a tradition that runs through families and among kids who grow up together. Footage of the under-sixes yelling and running like little tearaways in football jerseys is a heart-warming sight. The community support is huge and loud.

While Sait states that racism simply does not exist within the La Pa community, though it does outside, the Panthers occasionally feel keenly the racial slurs hurled at them by rival teams.  In 2004, in the Grand Final with the Coogee Dolphins, six members of the team were sent off for reacting with more than acceptable force on the field, leading to a loss he is keen never to repeat. The 2005 season, Sait’s last before retiring, shows discipline restore itself (to some degree) and enthusiasm increased. Sait, whose weekly tasks include regular fundraising for the under-sponsored club and personally washing team jerseys, is proud to bursting at the Grand Final and the feeling is contagious.

A no-frills sport-enthusiast documentary, its deceptive artlessness rests on a well-devised structure by director Michael Longbottom. La Perouse Panthers paints a warm and telling picture. Adorned by nothing more than the appropriate salty language and obligatory swearing, we are shown a close, footie-mad, unique community and some of the individual dedication, team spirit and family support which make it work both historically and in the present day.

Shifting Shelter 3                                                                     

Directed by Ivan Sen

As themselves: Cindy, Danielle, Willy, Ben

2006; Australian Film Commission, Indigenous Screen Australia; documentary; 52 minutes; 4½ stars

A project which has spanned 10 years and which may well continue into the future, award-winning director Ivan Sen’s (Beneath Clouds) documentary Shifting Shelter 3 is a revisitation of four young Aborigines at five yearly intervals. Beginning in 1995 while still at film school, Sen documented the hopes and dreams of Willy, Cindy, Danielle and Ben, all around 15 or 16, all living in remote rural areas in north-western NSW.

With segments highlighting each of the four in turn they initially talk about becoming University graduates, a professional singer and musician, an artist or travelling to study cultures all over the world. There is a beguiling innocence about them and so much hope that in each of their second and third segments, where the reality of drugs, crime, prison, domestic violence, early unplanned parenthood and resignation towards mediocrity in jobs with little fulfilment is shown, it’s immensely saddening. Even though each of the last segments talk about hope for the future and learning from mistakes to turn lives around, their life lessons have been almost unbearably hard.

Ben Ballangarry is the closest to realising his dream of touring the world in a band. He dreamed of singing and playing at the Opera House. On the night of this screening, in front of a packed audience, he did just that, playing live his own composition ‘When Trees Fall’, a yearning song in a strong, mellow and vibrant voice about loss of what is dear and the need to care more for our environment and each other. At 27, Ben now has four kids. His half-moon smile is melting and if he has any luck, it’s certain the talented singer will take it as far as he can.

What comes across most strongly in this searingly honest and unflinching series of self portraits in stages of their lives, is the importance of family. Each has kids, though Danielle, having been in prison twice and a recovering heroin addict, can only look at photos of her daughter, being cared for by an aunt. Each wants to be a better person for their kids, as though being better for themselves alone is not enough. The innocence they are protecting in their kids is a lot like honouring their own disillusioned dreams, and it’s a start when self worth has been eroded so early. The families they are each creating are the centre of their lives and a reason to be the best they can be, even when they want for their kids what they might have given up on, themselves. Nevertheless, in two of them, Ben and Cindy, there is visible a steel of resolve based in early family support they now pass on unconditionally and whole-heartedly to their own children. Cindy still wants to travel to other indigenous cultures and do research, but she’ll wait till her kids are grown. Of all of them, only Cindy talks about her Aboriginal heritage, and that in respect of wanting to learn more about it, since, she says, it’s dying out.

There are predictably similar themes and production elements in this documentary and the director’s award-winning debut feature Beneath Clouds. It’s immediately seen in the image of the road, the stark images of roadside signs on bleak outback highways or the sign outside Mulawa Correctional Centre, which point eloquently to social issues underlying the lives of the four. The soundtrack collaboration between the director and composer Alister Spence provides synthesised music to match and highlight the environments – small towns, country or city streets – in which the subjects find themselves. The small-town feeling of being trapped with nowhere to go is also there.

Undercutting all of this is the effect of the documentary itself on each of their lives. Willy, unrecognisably heavier than the charming teen he was in the first segment, cries to realise he could be further down, but is ‘in the middle’. It seems like a struggle between acceptance and resignation. It’s remarkable that each looks to the future with gleaming hopes, but if sadder they also have more wisdom, and possibly more focus and grit, than at 15. For these four young people the documentary might be salutary and I sincerely hope it is, to be reminded of their dreams and to realise their stories speak to so many people who, like a huge family, after listening and watching with chuckles and tears, wish them all well.

by Avril Carruthers