CINEMA REBORN - David Noakes and Rose Murray to present HOW THE WEST WAS LOST

Cinema Reborn 2025 will feature a number of restored Australian documentaries each of them presented by the film-makers or by people closely associated with the film and it’s restoration. HOW THE WEST WAS LOST is one of those films. It was made in 1987 a collaborative film Directed and Co-Produced by David Noakes and in iits day screened theatrically across Australia, at festivals around the world and included a sale to Channel 4, in the UK, and eventually screened on the ABC but only in a cut down form.  David has now supervised the restoration of this important film along with film restoration expert, Ray Argall, and the new version will be introduced by David at its Sydney and Melbourne Premiere at Cinema Reborn 2025. The film screens at Cinema Reborn in Sydney on Tuesday 6 May and in Melbourne on Friday 8 May.   Accompanying David in the presentation of the film will be Rose Murray. Rose is a Nyangumarta woman whose family were part of the 1946 Pilbara Strike. Growing up in Melbourne, Rose became active in Koori community politics. In 1978 Rose returned her stolen generation Mum back to her family. Rose has had a wide career in health, research, art and community development.   Rose’s thoughts on the film and its place in history are now published as a program note on the Cinema Reborn website. Here is a part of her text. “This is a loved and valued film. We have always encouraged newcomers to the Pilbara to track it down. Having the strikers tell the story in their own way may not happen again. We’ve shown the film at a couple of big venues with David’s permission and it’s been just lovely. Pilbara  mob have gotten up and told the story of their family being on strike. It’s really powerful. Perth people always say, ‘How come we weren’t told?’ ”I’m part of a group helping to share the story of the 1946 Strike in WA schools this year. The Strike and the How the West was Lost film will become better known in schools. I’m going to go to Cinema Reborn and support the Marrngu and other film makers who made it happen. All Australians need to know how important the strike is for today, not just yesterday.”   To read Rose Murray's text click here: David Noakes and Rose Murray are available for interview and a screener copy of the film can be made available for those interested in the film and the people who made it and are now re-presenting it. THE STORY On 1 May 1946, 800 Aboriginal station workers walked off sheep stations in the north-west of Western Australia, marking the beginning of a carefully organised strike that was to last for at least three years, but never officially ended.   The strike was more than a demand for better wages and conditions. It was, in the words of Keith Connolly in the Melbourne Herald, 'a well-considered statement by a grievously exploited people, standing up for their rights and dignity'.   How The West Was Lost tells the story of a shameful yet still largely unknown piece of Australia’s tangled history…   Session times and links  to bookings Click Here

On the ABC and on ABC I-View - ABLAZE (Alec Morgan & Tiriki Onus, Australia, 2021)

 

ABLAZE is coming to the ABC for NAIDOC week. It’s premiering Wednesday 6^th July at 8.30pm on ABC Plus and will be available on ABC I-view immediately afterwards.

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/ablaze

ABLAZE Is a film about Bill Onus – a truly heroic cultural and political figure who revived his people’s culture in the 1940’s and 50’s and helped ignite a civil rights movement that helped change the course of history for Indigenous Australians. The documentary is directed by Alec Morgan (Lousy Little Sixpence) and Tiriki Onus, Bill’s grandson.  The story starts with a film reel that mysteriously turned up at the National Film & Sound Archive. The film was actually made by Bill in 1946 and suggests that he might have been the first ever Aboriginal filmmaker. Tiriki goes on to chase a myriad leads about this grandfather, and uncovers a compelling story of activism, resistance, and politically driven art-making.

The film has already picked up a swag of awards including an AWGIE for Best Documentary Script, the Victorian Premier’s History Prize and 3 ATOMS.

Bill Onus

“The film is superbly made and important in its reminders – through one man’s remarkable life – of the struggles of Indigenous people in the all-too-recent past.” (David Stratton – review in ‘The Australian’)

“The footage is miraculous in its own right, the kind of direct window onto a lost world only the moving image can provide” (Jake Wilson – review in the SMH and The Age)

More information on the film’s website: https://ablazethefilm.com

The Current Cinema - Highly recommended - MY NAME IS GULPILIL (Molly Reynolds, Australia, 2021)

Molly Reynolds documentary on the life and near to death of Indigenous actor David Gulpilil seems to be a surprise hit. It’s also probably a certainty for any best documentary awards going round this year, an ironic situation for the fact that recognising Reynolds’ work as a documentary film-maker should have happened several years ago when she released her previous film Another Country. Still, bye the bye…

 

My Name is Gulpilil starts from a massive residue of affection for an actor who has been at it now for fifty plus years, beginning all the way back when the Brit Nicholas Roeg brought himself out here to make Walkabout. Gulpilil’s presence was basically the only human Australian element in the movie.

 

But now he’s sick, living away from his homeland, cared for by a truly saintly woman named Mary and he has been encouraged by Reynolds to give one last performance. On the way we are taken through his key roles and learn a little more about his life including the addiction and drinking problems and the occasional descent into complete poverty. 

 

A couple of things shine through. It took Gulpilil some thirty years before, thanks to Rolf de Heer, he was cast as the lead in a movie. That was The Tracker  made in 2002 and which won a host of awards including a sweep for Gulpilil in the AFI, FCCA and IF Awards for Best Actor.

 

What comes through from Molly Reynolds’ gentle probing is how all of Gulpilil’s key roles derive from some lived experience. He has no need of method acting to know about being an outsider, a criminal, a wanted man, an addict, an Indigenous man affected by casual and systemic racism in his own country. He’s lived it all. 

 

Molly Reynolds has captured it all too. Engrossing film-making. 

...and, it having been unearthed presumably from the NFSA's holdings, surely Gulpilil's  one man cabaret show, excerpts from which are included throughout the new film, crudely filmed as it apparently was, deserves another run somewhere maybe like NITV. It seems to already be an extraordinarily precious bit of the national heritage that should be screened much more.

On SBS, NITV and streaming at SBS On-demand - Rod Bishop enthuses over THE BEACH (Warwick Thornton, Australia, 2020)

Warwick Thornton

Eighteen months ago, SBS broadcast the 14-hour The Kimberley Cruise, a slow TV event aboard the Coral Discoverer, a 72-passenger ship making its way from Broome to Darwin. 

It was excruciating viewing. The ship was too big to get anywhere close to the Kimberley coastline and for much of the 14-hours the land was a thin ribbon on the horizon.

The Beach, however, another slow TV event from SBS and NITV, takes place on one of those strips of land and is a wholly different experience. If the ship from The Kimberley Cruisewere passing by, it would be nothing but a speck on the horizon.

Indigenous filmmaker Warwick Thornton needed an extended alcohol-free break. He had a beach shack built at remote Jilirr (Chile Creek) on the Dampier Peninsula in The Kimberley, 30 minutes south of Lombardina. It’s a stunning location with kilometres of sand to drive and walk and huge tides capable of leaving his shack completely surrounded by water. In one of many stunning shots, the drone photography makes the shack look much like the house in the final shot of Tarkovsky’s Solaris.

Warwick brings three chooks with him, ostensibly for eggs, but also for something alive to talk to. He also talks to crabs, fish, his food, himself and inanimate objects like the traditional spear he adapts for hunting.

Warwick Thornton and vehicle

His vehicle is a work of art. Something like a cross between a rusted tank base and an open-topped desert-jeep, it looks like a wreck waiting to be resurrected by the lads from Bush Mechanics. (An English friend emailed me after watching an episode of Bush Mechanics remarking “I didn’t realise windscreens were optional”).

Most surprising however, is a lot of footage that should be called Cooking with Warwick, dish after dish methodically crafted and presented to himself like a night out at Tetsuya’s. There should really be a The Beach recipe book.

Given the fresh ingredients, the deal seemed to be for the crew to bring something fresh back from Lombardina where they bunk down for the nights, but Warwick is responsible for all the fresh protein. Which means mastering the spear or a net for fish and lobster; collecting crabs; clams; mussels and oysters. One of the chooks comes in handy, as well.

If all this sounds a bit thin for a 3-hours running time, Warwick’s son, cinematographer Dylan River produces some of the best images of remote Australia I have ever seen. Certainly, the best from the Kimberley. Ravishing landscape shots after ravishing seascape shots are interspersed with startling detail in and around the hut - the play of light on the tin and wood; the jars of spice and condiments; and, of course, Warwick’s ravaged visage. The cinematography is nothing short of magnificent.

Music from Melbournians The Dirty Three and Rowland S Howard isn’t too shabby, either.

Talking of her time with Warwick at CAAMA in Alice Springs, Rachel Perkins observed: “He just used to grunt and not speak much”.  And he grunts and swears a lot here too, but when he has a story to tell, it pours out eloquently, even though the chooks seem wholly unconcerned: “Are you listening to me, ladies?”

Somewhere in the final hour and without explanation, a dog appears, settling into the hut, sleeping on his bed and trotting around with Warwick as he goes in search of protein. He talks to it sometimes, but not very often. He seems afraid of it.

When it’s time to leave, a slimmer, energized Warwick packs up the jeep-tank and drives off down the vast beach. And the dog? 

No spoilers, but it is black.