WWII veteran and linguist, Ian Urquhart, was sent to Sarawak in 1947 where he served as a British civil service officer for eighteen years. In 1955 Ian began filming his visits to indigenous communities in the ‘ulu’ – the near inaccessible forests of the Baram, Tutoh and Tinjar rivers and the Kelabit highlands. In 1993, Australian filmmaker Andrew Garton made his first visit to Sarawak. Over the next twenty years, Andrew too travelled into the ulu, visiting the remaining forest communities there. Drawing on both Ian and Andrew’s footage and journals, KNOW ME is an intimate portrait of Sarawak’s fragile biomass and the relationship its unique indigenous cultures have to it. It is as if, through their immersion within the ulu, the remaining forest yearns to be known before no one is left to tell their story.
Andrew Garton has worked in film and the media arts for forty years. His credits include work as a composer, writer and director, editor and artistic director on documentaries, theatre, sound and video installations, music videos and online media.
Andrew’s films, performance art, installations and online media have been screened, broadcast installed and/or performed at the Ars Electronica Festival, DocumentaX, the Taipei International Arts Festival, ORF/KunstRadio, Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific, Melbourne Fringe Festival, ABC TV and Radio, C31 Melbourne and Sydney, DD1 India, Chennai International Film Festival, Assam Documentary Film Festival and Brahmaputra Literary Festival, Assam, India and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Other honours and awards include a Master of Arts, RMIT University, Best Australian Documentary and Best Director judge for the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival (2022), judging at the National Community Television Awards (2007) the John Bird and Film Victoria Award for Innovation in a Multimedia Production (1999). Notable appointments include facilitator of Arts Law Australia film and copyright workshops (2006), Program Director, Open Channel (2005 – 2007), Producer/Operations Manager, EngageMedia (2009 – 2011), Board Secretary, Association for Progressive Communications (2007 – 2014).
Andrew currently teaches post-graduate video and documentary production as well as multiplatform journalism and media ecology in the School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education, Swinburne University. He has designed and leads videography workshops for postgraduate science researchers at University of Melbourne.
