17th
Madurai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2015
Films
from Australia : curated by Shweta Kishore
Freedom
Stories is a documentary project
exploring the contribution being made to Australian society by former asylum
seekers who arrived by boat around 2001 – the year of political controversy
over the MV Tampa, the Pacific solution, the children overboard affair and the
SIEV X disaster.
They found themselves in
indefinite mandatory detention in remote places such as Woomera or Nauru and
then placed on temporary protection visas (TPVs), which extended their
uncertainty. It has taken much resilience and many years for them to build
secure lives, become Australian citizens and start contributing to their new
country.
As part of her work for a
non-government organization, Maria Tiimon, who lives in Australia, promotes awareness
of the consequences of climate change. "People experience the impacts of
global warming but they don't know what causes it," she explains. It turns
that global warming also affects Maria personally: she was born in Kiribati,
which scientists believe will be one of the first countries to disappear
beneath the waves as a result of global warming. Its population of 105,000
lives six feet above sea level, and scattered over 33 islands in the Pacific
Ocean. Kiribati is steadily being swallowed up by the rising sea level; trees,
roads, whole villages are disappearing beneath the waves. Mass migration seems
to be the only long-term solution. In 2009, while preparing for the climate
conference in Copenhagen, Maria receives some bad news from home: her father is
gravely ill. Zubrycki follows Maria during a long period in which there is a
lot at stake for her, both in personal and professional terms. The filmmaker
watches Maria's transformation from a shy young woman into a powerful lady who
doesn't hesitate to push her urgent cause in front of his camera. Through
Maria's story, Zubrycki tackles a theme that in time will affect many people
all over the world.
3. The Trial (52 min, 2009) Director: Joan Robinson
In February 2008 twelve
Muslim men went on trial in Melbourne for terrorism offences. The trial ran for
nine months, heard 482 secretly taped conversations and presented 66,000 pages
of evidence. With unique access to Greg Barns, one of the key defense barristers,
and Omar Merhi, the brother of the youngest accused, The Trial takes us inside
one of the biggest court cases in Australia’s history. A trial where there is
more at stake than just the fate of the accused.
4.Welcome to Australia (50 min. 1999) Director: John Pilger
4.Welcome to Australia (50 min. 1999) Director: John Pilger
The
Australian heroine from start, when she carried the Olympic torch into the
stadium, to finish, as she crossed the line to take 400m gold, was the
indigenous athlete Cathy Freeman. Against the will of many of her still
oppressed people, she came to represent the symbol, albeit shallow, of
reconciliation between White and Aboriginal Australia. But the frenzy of flames
and fireworks surrounding the Games blinded the rest of the world to the darker
side of a land down under.
In
1999, John Pilger returned home to find that the elaborate preparations for the
Games overshadowed a hidden world where Aborigines continue to live in Third
World conditions. He revealed that some of the greatest sportsmen and women in
the world were in fact Aboriginal. Many of them, like blacks in South Africa
under Apartheid, were until recently denied a place in their country's Olympic
teams.
He also found that the
Australian Government was in the process of overturning the landmark
legislation of 1992 which finally recognized Aborigines as people with common
law rights before the English colonized the country. 'Welcome to Australia: The
Secret Shame Behind the Sydney Olympics' was the third film Pilger made on the
Aboriginal struggle alongside fellow Australian, Alan Lowery.
No comments:
Post a Comment