REEL LIFE
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Decisions can be difficult to make and when faced with a variety of excellent choices the task is made worse. In the case of nominating the ‘Film of the Year’ the Catholic Film Office concluded that five films focussing on Indigenous Australians were equally deserving of the award. Jury Chair and Jesuit priest Fr Richard Leonard is confident the decision was the right one. Jury Chair and Jesuit priest Fr Richard Leonard is confident the decision was the right one. |
Jury Chair and Jesuit priest Fr Richard Leonard is confident the decision was the right one.
‘By custom we have always decided on just one film each year, but with such strong work in the cinema this year on a critical national issue, we wanted to honour this bloc of work.’
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While all five films are of varying cinematic quality, they follow up on the widespread movement for aboriginal reconciliation that has been on the national agenda for some years. ‘Given what the Pope and the Australian Bishops have said about these issues, we wanted to reward each filmmaker for raising different, but complementary insights into the complex history, the sometimes fraught present and, hopefully, the just and reconciled future in which back and white Australians can share’, Fr Leonard said. |
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And the winners are …
Rabbit Proof Fence is an extraordinary tale of the survival of three children who were forcibly removed from their families so they can be assimilated into white society.
Tracker is a stylised, slow and deliberate study of the human condition where an Aboriginal man shows a young white man that he need not be a prisoner of the past.
Black and White is the story of the wrongful conviction and near-execution of Max Stuart for rape and murder in the 1950’s.
Australian Rules is a contemporary racial drama about the price some people pay, both, from their freedom from fear and their imprisonment in it.
Beneath Clouds is a road film about how young Australians on the fringe of society form bonds that help them survive their past and prepare for a new future.
‘In each case these films hold up a mirror to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians and asks us to think about where we have been with each other, and more importantly where we want to go’, Fr Leonard said.
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