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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-07-07 Daily Xml
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YUDUM

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:13): I rise today to talk about a wonderful film premiere I attended on Tuesday night at Tandanya, as part of the NAIDOC Week celebrations. The film is called Yudum, and it is a film that I recommend to all members in this place, and to any other South Australians. The film was written by Aaron Stuart.

Aaron was born in Port Augusta in 1968, and his family lived on the Davenport reserve. There had been many infant deaths on the reserve, and because Aaron was very ill as a baby, his parents placed him in the adjacent Umeewarra Mission Children's Home. His mother took him back to the reserve when he was four years old. Aaron went on to become a member of the South Australia Police, and served with SAPOL for 18 years, before joining Centacare Catholic Family Services in the Diocese of Port Pirie in 2008.

Aaron has written a lot of stories, and has a collection of books with the stories of Yudum. When it was decided that Aaron would turn one of these stories into a film, the people of Oodnadatta were very pleased to hear that and, in fact, insisted that the film be shot in Oodnadatta—which, when you have a budget of $20,000 to make a film and you are reliant on the federal government's suicide prevention program, and the generosity of the Catholic Diocese of Port Pirie, and other private funding to make the film, it was a very tight budget.

So, the filmmaker and two stars of the movie (who were taken up from Adelaide) arrived at Oodnadatta on the Monday to hold a community meeting to work out who would be in this movie. The idea was that members of the community would be part of the film; however, when they turned up to their first meeting on the Monday, there was no-one there. Obviously, it is pretty hard to make a film when you do not have anyone there to participate.

But, they got around it and eventually the people all came from far and wide. They were asked, 'Say these lines,' and told, 'Do this particular thing,' and the movie was shot inside a week—which is pretty remarkable, for anyone who has had anything to do with making a movie or documentary. Then the film was brought back to Adelaide and edited.

It is a delightful film that tells the story of a young Aboriginal man growing up not knowing who his parents were and, without wanting to give away the plot, it goes through his falling in love, getting married, having children, splitting up and getting back together again. As I said at the outset, it is a film that I would thoroughly recommend. There are a lot of people who need to be thanked for the great work that has gone into this.

I would particularly like to mention Terry Cleary, who is the statewide program manager for the Ananguku Arts and Culture Aboriginal Corporation based at Tandanya. I met Terry a few weeks ago when I was opening an art exhibition at Tony Bond's art gallery out on Magill Road—the Papunya Tula exhibition. I ran into Terry that evening, and he told me about the film and said that they wanted to go back up and have the world premiere of this film in Oodnadatta where there is a small outdoor screen but, having spent the $20,000 on making this remarkable movie, they did not have any funds at all to actually be able to put on some food and get some transport to take people from the surrounding areas into Oodnadatta.

I asked Terry to send me an email with the brief, and I then passed it on to minister Hill the next day and, within about 24 hours, the department had found $1,000 to enable the world premiere to happen. Having been to the one at Tandanya, it was a wonderful experience, and the stars of the show and the director of the show—Terry's son—were all there, but apparently the one in Oodnadatta was fantastic because every time one of the locals came onto the big screen everyone just broke into raucous laughter, and it was a really fun night and a great celebration for the people of Oodnadatta.

Terry, I might say, also stars in the movie in the role of the Catholic priest, and he did say that it was hard to find someone to play that role once they had arrived in Oodnadatta. I congratulate Terry and Aaron and everyone else involved in the film.

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