PUBLISHED07 Sep 2021
Our NAIDOC Doc-List 2020
NAIDOC 2020 invites everyone to see, hear and learn from Australia's Indigenous history.
Indigenous Australians have lived on this land for over 65,000 years. Covering the country in hundreds of nations with distinct languages that developed the world’s oldest stories. The First Nations peoples were the first explorers and custodians of this land.
Yet, despite this undeniable connection with Australia, Indigenous people continue to fight for their rights, land and culture.
These stories highlight just some of the ongoing battles Indigenous Australian’s face today – providing us with a unique opportunity to listen and learn.
Connection to Country
Synopsis:
Connection to Country follows a group of Indigenous people from the Pilbara as they battle to preserve Australia’s unique cultural heritage from the ravages of a booming mining industry.
In the heart of Western Australia, the Burrup Peninsula hosts the largest concentration of rock art in the world. It’s a dramatic, ancient landscape so sacred that some parts shouldn’t be looked upon at all except by Traditional Owners.
Waves of industrialisation and development threaten sites all over the Pilbara. The Burrup has become home to salt mines, iron ore port facilities and one of Australia’s largest gas plants but the people of the Pilbara, forever connected to their country, forever responsible, are fighting back – documenting the rock art, recording their sacred sites and battling to get their unique cultural heritage recorded, recognised and celebrated.
 |
 |
 |
In My Blood It Runs
Synopsis:
Ten-year-old Dujuan is a child-healer, a good hunter and speaks three languages. As he shares his wisdom of history and the complex world around him we see his spark and intelligence. Yet Dujuan is ‘failing’ in school and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare and the police. As he travels perilously close to incarceration, his family fight to give him a strong Arrernte education alongside his western education lest he becomes another statistic. We walk with him as he grapples with these pressures, shares his truths and somewhere in-between finds space to dream, imagine and hope for his future self.
 |
|
|
 from Nov 8th |
Putuparri and the Rainmakers
Synopsis:
Putuparri and the Rainmakers is a universal story about the sacred relationship between people and place. It takes audiences on a rare and emotional journey to meet the traditional rainmakers of Australia’s Great Sandy Desert who have fought a twenty-year battle to win back their traditional homeland.
The film spans ten transformative years in the life of Tom ‘Putuparri’ Lawford as he navigates the deep chasm between his Western upbringing and his growing determination to fight for his family’s homeland. A trip back to his grandparent’s ‘country’ in the desert begins the process of cultural awakening.
|
 |
|
Undermined: Tales from the Kimberley
Synopsis
Australia’s vast and unspoiled Kimberley region is under threat, with mining, pastoralism and irrigated agriculture driving an unprecedented land grab. UNDERMINED investigates the politics of an area now branded “the future economic powerhouse of Australia,” and what this means for our First People and their unique cultural landscapes. As pressure from industry exposes the limits of Indigenous land rights, what will remain of over 200 remote Aboriginal communities? We follow young leader Albert Wiggan, veteran cattleman Kevin Oscar and Senior Elder June Davis through David-and-Goliath battles to preserve their homelands, asking the question: for whose benefit is this development?
|
|
|
In My Own Words
Prison Songs
Synopsis:
The inmates of a Darwin prison are shown in a unique and completely new light in Australia’s first-ever documentary musical. Incarcerated in tropical Northern Territory, over 800 inmates squeeze into the overcrowded spaces of Berrimah Prison. In an Australian first, the inmates share their feelings, faults and experiences in the most extraordinary way – through song.
|
|
 |