Aborigines in white films

Hidden Pictures
Travelling film festival
Australian Film Commission Indigenous Branch
Reviewed by Chris Martin Hidden Pictures is the title of a confronting selection of film, some new, some old and archival, currently being screened nationally by the Australian Film Commission. The selection forms a disturbing history of white representations of indigenous Australia, taken from a hundred years of film in this country. The selection covers a variety of material, both commercial and ethnographic, from the silent Moth of Moonbi and newsreel glimpses to landmark political works such as Backroads and the contemporary Blackfellas. The intent and the impact of these presentations are to review traditional European images of Aboriginal peoples, to explore the inherent prejudice found there and to look at efforts to break the stereotypes. A review of this kind, the presenters argue, is both timely and essential for our film industry as it enters its second century. "Images of indigenous Australians have played a major role in how this country has been portrayed both nationally and internationally. There are some 10,000 separate filmic items, and yet indigenous people remain the most invisible of all Australians. This invisibility has led to ignorance, misunderstanding, stereotyping, patronisation, mistrust and racism", according to Wal Saunders, head of the AFC Indigenous Branch. This was borne out in the feature presentation Jedda, shown at the tour's Sydney opening on October 3. The film, still screened on television periodically as an "Australian classic", has all the elements of traditional representation. The Aborigine is depicted as primitive, childlike, exotic and alien and always as subject to the higher European culture. The movie plods under a leaden script, with the Aboriginal actors struggling to relieve its wooden direction. Nonetheless, it is still remembered for some remarkable first performances, notably that of Robert Tudawali as Marbuck. Tudawali, of the Tiwi people of Melville Island, went on to act in other films and a television series, Whiplash. Despite a battle with alcoholism and illness, he was active in mobilising support for the Gurindji people's land claim at Wave Hill, before his early death from pneumonia. Jedda is well chosen as a piece of cultural misrepresentation, laden as it is with implied messages of racial superiority, paternalism and dominance. Made in the 1940s, it is very much of its time, reflecting the predominant view that the Aboriginal peoples were rapidly and inevitably dying out. The tone throughout is of a doomed race, too primitive to survive in the unquestioned ascension of white society. The Hidden Pictures project looks only at films made by whites about blacks, contrasting pieces from different times to show changes in attitude. The inclusion of well-received features such as Blackfellas marks the progress in white consciousness, with the first realistic portrayals of urban Aborigines. The presenters make the point, however, that while we continue to see white actors "blackening up" and playing Aborigines, we still have a long to go.
[For details of screenings in other cities see Meetings ... Parties ... Anything ... p22-23.]