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SOLID SISTERS Screen works toured around the world
supplied by dot ayu 1 December 2015
T
he SOLID SCREEN Festival and Awards has just wrapped up the 2015 international tour after being screened and presented at venues beginning in Cairns in September, then onto Mexico, Hawaii and finally New Zealand last week at the Healing Our Spirit Worldwide gathering. At destinations along the tour, awards were also given in person to SOLID Screenmakers in Sydney, Los Angeles and Toronto. The works of local and international Indigenous women screen-makers were screened for exciting events celebrating their
Jenny Fraser and Michelle Blakeney. All images supplied
unique and valuable contributions to screen culture worldwide. The SOLID SCREEN Festival featured Queensland Murri screen-makers alongside that of others from around the country and Native Canadian and Maori interdisciplinary practitioners from artforms such as performance art, documentary, theatre and digital storytelling arts backgrounds. After kicking off the Tour at The Cairns Institute, The SOLID SISTERS were invited to screen in Mexico for the Festival de Cine y Video Kayche’ Tejidos Visuales held in Merida, and also toured around to other venues in the Mayan Region of the Yucatan from September 27 - October
3. The Festival is run by the Kayche Collective, who are a group of professional film makers, communications specialists, anthropologists, designers, video artists and independent cultural promoters driven by an interest in creating spaces for audiovisual dialogue. The Film and Video Festival “Kayche’ Tejidos Visuales” or Visual Fabrics, is a window that evokes dialogue in order to promote self-representation and demand catalysts for change in an unequal world. While in Mexico, Jenny Fraser co-founded The Cine Peoples Alliance, which is a new international network of screen festivals working to facilitate screen
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culture, founded in 2015. The Cine Peoples Alliance aims to allow screen works and events to be more readily available, to connect diverse aspects of culture and to foster interdisciplinary exchange, support and healing between communities and industry professionals. Founded in Mexico, during Festival Kayche in Merida, the alliance also includes others from Mexico including Festival de Cine Y Video Indigena that is based in Morelia, Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de Pueblos Indígenas in Oaxaca, and the SOLID Screen Festival, representing International Indigenous Women, which is one of very few Indigenous Screen Festivals currently running in Australia. The Cine Peoples Alliance will broaden the network to include other festivals and events that are also undertaking the ground work of cultural maintenance, to allow meaningful representation, empowerment and collaboration. SOLID SCREEN Sisters had a screening and yarning circle hosted by The Hawai’i Women in Filmmaking on October 27th, which was the first event held in their new premises at Hawaii Filmmakers Collective in Honolulu. The crowd was also treated to some samples of Macadamia Nuts,which have been a growing industry in Hawaii, from plants that were originally taken there from Native Macadamia at Pimpama in Queensland. At the Healing Our Spirit Worldwide gathering in New Zealand, festival director Jenny Fraser also presented about the healing arts retreat that was held alongside the 2014 SOLID SCREEN Festival at Innot Hot Springs in Far North Queensland. She shared the process and importance for initiating retreats specifically for the front line workers in the arts and film industries, with the international delegates gathered in Hamilton.
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The audience was also shown a sneak preview of the upcoming documentary which features footage that documented the retreat, and the each-one-teachone sessions presented by the 25 participants at Innot Hot Springs. The events, which were all free to the public, are a consolidation to the field of Indigenous Women Screen Makers as a gift the local communities. cyberTribe is marking the 15th anniversary of exhibitions and events and SOLID SCREEN Festival has been shaped to showcase and enhance the local, national and international wealth of creative talent in the variety of artforms made by and for the screen. The SOLID SCREEN Festival focuses on the professional development and cultural safety of women, and it is appropriate that it is held in September, to mark the Seven Sisters Dreaming, the star formation that is in the sky at this time of the year. The Seven Sisters is a popular Aboriginal Dreaming story based on a constellation known to other cultures as well, like Matariki for Maori, Subaru in Japan, Pleiades to the Greeks and Madoo’asinug is the constellation of the seven sweating stones or “seven sisters” for Anishnawbe. This story reminds us that having a group of women who support and encourage, can help to persevere during times of stress. The SOLID Screen Festival thanks goodness for the sisterhood. SOLID SCREEN Festival director Jenny Fraser says the Far North Queensland region needs a lot of work to grow the Indigenous Screen Industry, and sees the event as a great opportunity for those Indigenous practitioners interested in exploring screen based mediums of expression. She says the event will also highlight some pertinent issues for women screen-makers; “Its a great way to spread the word about Indigenous Womens contributions to screen culture,
which is often hidden or takes a back seat in supporting the work of the male dominated industry”. Those screening works include Darlene Johnson, who has offered her iconic short film titled Two Bob Mermaid. Koori screen maker Michelle Blakeney travelled from New South Wales to introduce her work A Lot of Lost Survivors for the events in Cairns and Honolulu. There were also some introductions done by video Lily Shearer in Brewarrina for her theatre work This Fella my Memory, Penny Evans in Lismore, for her film The Ab-Sorption Method, and from Ariel Smith in Canada for her music video called Target Girls. Fraser founded cyberTribe online gallery, which is marking the 15th anniversary of exhibitions and events this year. cyberTribe is an unfunded online gallery focused on nurturing digital and experimental art, and has been at the forefront of exhibiting cutting edge and politically important artworks and first hand statements from Indigenous Artists internationally, both online and in other gallery spaces across the world. Over the years, cyberTribe has brought together Indigenous and other artists from places across Australasia, the Pacific, the Americas and elsewhere to participate in exhibitions of international standing. Also launching this year, as the latest digital strategy for cyberTribe, a new online TV channel has been created for 24/7 broadcasting and access internationally, with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander screen culture at the centre. Titled worldscreenculture.tv it is a new home grown initiative to strategically branch out in a new direction. With a particular focus on the promotion and development of screen culture, this will be a place to access documentation and archives from screenings and events, such as video and photos
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from the recent Fringe Dwellers commemorative screening and BLAK RELEASE, both held in Cairns, which is usually a place left off the screen culture map. World Screen Culture was a finalist in the Queensland Multimedia Awards in the Best Charity / Not for Profit Website category, which was announced in Cairns on November 7th. The Media Awards was formed as a platform for members of the media and associated businesses to showcase their expertise in their field and demonstrate to their peers and competitors the high standard of their work. The 2015 Queensland Multi Media Awards covered print, television, radio and multi-media and entries. This region includes Sunshine Coast, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville, Cairns, Atherton Tablelands and west to Mt Isa, North to Weipa. This year SOLID SCREEN Festival was a pre-conference event for The Tropics of the Imagination Conference, which is a multidisciplinary conference on imaginative and creative approaches to culture and nature in the tropics. The screening took place at The Cairns Institute, Smithfield Campus, Far North Queensland. Kicking off the tour on Wednesday 16 September, the SOLID SCREEN Festival also featured the SOLID Awards for Indigenous women in Screen, to value women with long-standing and also emerging careers in the screen arts both in Australia and overseas. The aim is to honour women who have long standing and emerging careers in the variety of roles that make up the Screen Arts, those who have cut a track here and overseas. This is an important way of acknowledging historically significant contributions over the past 30 - 40 years and also a very rare opportunity to celebrate the current outstanding practice offered by Indigenous Women Screenmakers. This is the second year
Fraser Cine peoples alliance
of the SOLID SCREEN Awards and categories this year include Historically SOLID Screen Trail Blazer, SOLID Contribution to Photo Media, SOLID Screen Storyteller, SOLID Screen Artist, SOLID Screen Curator, SOLID Screen Festival Director and SOLID Arts Leadership. The 2015 Historically SOLID Screen Trail Blazer is a posthumous Award that has been awarded to Koori film maker Essie Coffey who, in 1978 made My Survival as an Aboriginal, which she gave to Queen Elizabeth II as a gift at the opening of Australia’s new Parliament House in 1988. The film rocked Australia and the world with its presentation of atrocities and hardships committed against Aboriginal people. It delves beneath surface appearances to reveal a strong resistance to assimilation and loss of identity, as the late Essie Coffey, a Murrawarri woman, takes us into the Aboriginal struggle for survival. She documented the effect of dispossession, the chronic
depression, alcoholism, deaths in custody and poverty that were so much a part of life for Aboriginal people. The sequel, My Life As I Live It, was released in 1993. Coffey also appeared in the film Backroads and in her later years, Essie developed renal failure and became the subject of the film Big Girls Don’t Cry, by Aboriginal filmmaker Darren Ballangarri. She passed away on January 3rd, 1998. Other SOLID Award winners for 2015 are Koori photographer Barbara McGrady who is a Gamilaroi Murri yinah (woman) from the north west of NSW and Southern Queensland. A Sydney based photographer, Barbara’s images tell the story of contemporary Aboriginal history through her unique sociological eye. Barbara describes herself as an observer and a protagonist - a ‘documentarian’ of historical events that are important to Aboriginal culture and people. A SOLID Screen Maker Award has gone to Nanobah Becker who
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is a member of the Navajo Nation and received a BA in Anthropology from Brown University. She spent several years working with Native youth both at the Navajo Nation and in Albuquerque at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute before deciding to pursue filmmaking, and is now currently living and working in Los Angeles, California. Another SOLID Screen Maker Award has gone to Tracy Rector a Seminole/Choctaw film maker based in Seattle. Tracy earned her Masters in Education from Antioch University’s First Peoples Program. She specialized in Native American Studies, traditional plant medicine and documentary film. As the producer and director of many award-winning films Tracy has developed an awareness and sensitivity to the power of media and film as a modern storytelling tool. Maori actress Rena Owen will receive the SOLID Contribution to Screen Culture Award, as she became one of New Zealand’s most successful and recognizable Actors on the international film platform following her performance as Beth Heke in Once Were Warriors and for the last 10 years, Rena has extensively toured the International Film Festival circuit to promote various Films, and also to serve on Festival Juries. She has also served as a Consultant for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. The SOLID Arts Leadership Award goes to Screen Womens advocate Whetu Fala also from Aotearoa New Zealand, who
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Nanobah Becker.
has produced, directed and edited, hundreds of hours of television, including drama, documentaries, reality series and short films in Aōtearoa New Zealand since getting her start at Television NZ in 1988. “The international tour was not funded, but the support for the
SOLID SISTERS from overseas has been truly overwhelming and we are truly excited and humbled to be able to share the SOLID love and grow the idea internationally” said Jenny Fraser. See more info on the website: www.solidscreen.com.au