Friday, April 27, 2007

My career in fillums


<--underside of Story Bridge

I haven't told you about the sequel to Sigh, mainly because I've been too busy doing it. When I rang to say I wouldn't be doing the short film after all, the Project Officer said, 'A producer has just pulled out of another one, do you want to have a look at that?' Might as well, I thought.

Well, it is a mile ahead of the others and I've taken it on. It's about the relationship between an indigenous man and his son. Initially they wanted an indigenous producer, but they couldn't find one, so it's me.

This is a bit scary I must say. Unfortunately it's written by a young white boy, who seems completely naive about Aboriginal/white relations ('They used to be discriminated against,' seems to be his schema) but the director is indigenous and is talking to uncles around these parts about how true the story seems. So far their feedback has been good.

I get very tense around indigenous issues. Even as I write this, I'm thinking, is it more p.c. to say 'Aboriginal' or 'indigenous'? I think, being a lesbian/woman/child of migrants I'm more accustomed to being the Other, rather than this position of bumbling along as the big oppressive white person come to appropriate the culture. And it seems so easy to be offensive. As a lesbian, I like it when there are gay characters in movies; as long as they are truthful characters I don't think much about whether the team who created them are gay themselves. In fact I think it's good when creative teams remember we exist and make a character who happens to be gay (or in a wheelchair, or Muslim, or whatever). Working on Aboriginal stories seems a bit more fraught. I keep thinking, if we don't do this right it could really blow up in my face.

(And people who have had babies, how on earth did you get anything done while you were pregnant? I keep having to go and have little nana naps. Thank god I work from home)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Re: the Aboriginal/Indigenous thing: I'd ask the people whom you're working with what they're comfortable with.

There was a time when Indigenous was preferred because it was seen to encompass both 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander'. But a lot of people seem to see that as a government term and prefer 'Aboriginal' (tho that's a term with a similar history). But not 'Aborigines' -- I wouldn't go there.

Anything you were concerned about -- I'd just ask, when you felt it was a good time to do so.