When Bill and Mick Thaiday grew up on Palm Island in the 1950s, it was radio that imposed by the Aboriginal Protection Act. Later, it would also free them from the grip of alcohol addiction and start them on a journey that’s lasted almost 20 years. Together they have travelled like a couple of nomads, developing Aboriginal radio stations in the remote areas of Australia. Their aim is to give a voice to Aboriginal people where their parents and grandparents had none.
GREEN TEA AND CHERRY RIPE tells the story of six Japanese women who married Australian servicemen after the Second World War, their efforts to build new lives in Australia and the challenges they faced in an alien land. In 1945 Japan was a bombed-out nation in ruins, its people living in poverty. Precious kimonos were exchanged for rice. Australia was one of the nations that provided men for the Allied Occupation forces; officially they could not socialize with the Japanese. Eventually about 600 of these servicemen married Japanese women, and, after considerable resistance from the Australian Government, brought their wives to Australia from 1952 onwards. The women came to a new homeland which made some of them feel uneasy and strangely out of place. Their new families wanted them to become Australians, but their own language and lifestyle often prevented them from adapting and communicating.
Three women share their art and their experience of being in country. They share a sense of belonging to a place and walking in it, dancing with it as the songs of country and culture resonate in their artistic expression. Each artist with a personal interpretation of country presents a selection of artworks that reflect the multi-faceted colours of Kimberley light, the nuance of detailed observation of a loved environment and the expression of a living vibrant cultural presence.
A documentary that carries the words of Rupert Max Stuart, Arrernte Mat-utjarra Elder, his philosophies and message about passing culture on and keeping it alive.
Sunset to Sunrise is part of the Nganampa Anwernekenhe series produced by Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) Productions. Nganampa Anwernekenhe means ‘ours’ in the Pitjanjatjara and Arrernte lanuages, and the series aims to contribute to the preservation of Indigenous languages and cultures.
”I’m not black, I’m not white, I’m a yellow fella and I’m gonna stay that way”.
In 1978, Tom Lewis appeared in the Australian feature film, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. The life of the character he played was hauntingly close to his own, a young, restless man of mixed heritage, struggling for a foothold on the edge of two cultures. Tom’s mother is a traditional Indigenous woman of southern Arnhem Land, his father a Welsh stockman who he never really knew.
Yellow Fella is a journey across the land and into Tom’s past, as he attempts to find the resting place of his father and to finally confront the truth of his most inner feelings of love and identity.