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December 26, 2003
It is often said by some that in a globalized world a national cinema is a thing of the past. It belonged to the days when the ladies talked about cultural nationalism at the local coffee shop before discussing their problems with men. These days I'm hearing celebrations of cosmpolitanism by those who live, work and think within the universal culture of the global economy. And the sneers about cultural nationalism from today's free traders.
Certainly, Fox Studies in Sydney, as a cheap production site for Hollywood, closes down the space for a national cinema to work within.
But what of an Australian film that deals with making blacks whites:
Ken Merfeld
And a film that does so in terms of the historical context of governing the indigenous population through assimilation and forcibly taking the half castes away from their country, family and community? A time---the 1930s---when those who governed the country saw the dark aborigines in the bush as the real aborigines and the half castes as potential whites.
A film that shows the desire by indigneous people not to be white, to escape from their confinement as coerced cheap labor for whites and to return home to their country:
Artist: Helicopter Tjungurrai, Title: Wunkartu Waterhole, Region: Desert - Balgo community
Their country is where they belong. It is the place they call home. It is from their home that they now produce contemporary Australian art.
A film such as Philip Noyce's recent (2001) Rabbit Proof Fence, which I watched on video on Tuesday night, would be a recent example of national cinema in Australia. I have not seen the earlier (1977) documentary informed Backroads so I cannot connect the two. The narrative is simple. Three young half-caste children (Aborigines of 'mixed-blood') are forcibly removed from their families in "primitive" society and placed in a correctional institution run by white nuns so as to prepare them for integration into the "civilized" white society as cheap labor. They escape and make the 1500 mile journey back to their homeland. 2 of the girls return home. One is captured and she never sees her homeland again.
This is a form of historical remembering of what governance through the instruments of assimilation meant for indigneous people in their everyday life.
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Yes, I thought about Rabbit Proof Fence and the Tracker when I was thinking about Australia's cinematic film. and I when I was thinking about "uncultured multiculturalism" as an alternative to older ideas of cosmopolitanism (as in an exclusively affluent white metro-cosmopolitanism)I was also thinking about Lantana. A contemporary movie which knows its audience (urban educated adults) and asks them to question their own cultural positions - the plot line where the "wog" is the most obvious suspect for the murder of a white woman is really interesting. And it is a very Australian film...