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TRANSCRIPTS
From Broome to the Czech Republic, Film Australia tracked down many of the filmmakers whose work is included in Film Australia's Outback DVD to interview them about their filmmaking experiences.
Edited transcripts of those interviews are available here.
Lee Robinson (Outback Patrol, 1952) recalls his days on films such as Namatjira the Painter, School in the Mailbox and Crocodile Hunters as well as Outback Patrol, bringing to life a bygone era of film production. Apart from finding the subject matter absolutely absorbing, the outback presented us with something that Hollywood couldn't challenge. We kept out of the studios because we only had the one studio anyway and it was totally inadequate. Any time we went to the studio, we were pitting ourselves against the Americans and the British and the French, and we knew we could never handle it. But any time that we got out on location that gave us wide open spaces, nobody could better us.
Ian Dunlop (Desert People, 1966) describes meeting and filming one of the last nomadic Aboriginal families living in the desert and the privilege of working for more than 30 years with the Indigenous people of Australia. I shot in black-and-white. Why? Because I thought this was probably the last chance ever perhaps to film this remarkable and, I thought, really beautiful way of life. These people living in this incredible environment, a harsh but beautiful environment with seemingly so few resources, but having a rich and meaningful life. I wanted it to be as beautiful as possible and I thought that black-and-white was actually more beautiful than colour. And as it turned out, black-and-white lasted much longer than colour - it doesn't fade. So these films will probably be around long after all my colour films have faded.
Gil Brealey (Where Dead Men Lie, 1972) remembers the innovations of the 60s and 70s. He recounts the challenges and benefits of producing drama in the outback and recalls the early work of Jack Thompson, Peter Weir and Dean Semler. Sound is the other thing, because you can hear your heart beat in places. The silence is just extraordinary. During the day, in particular, when everything has gone quiet, there are no animals, no birds, nothing. Just complete, absolute silence, and then the sound of a little bit of the wind rising, the sound of sand falling across. All of that, I think, is extraordinarily moving. The thing most of all is that when you're on your own, you get this focusing in on yourself. No wonder that most of the great religions come from the desert, because when you're in those situations, you're thrown upon your own resources so much and your own mind so much that the introspection is extraordinarily rich and very powerful...
David Haythornthwaite (Outback Supply, 1977) talks about the colourful outback characters he's encountered and what it was like working with Dean Semler as his cameraman. I think what's really good about going into a remote area, and this can be not just the outback, is the completely new experience that you have. The completely non-city, non-urban experience, where you're responsible for looking after yourself a bit more. And meeting people who are completely different to city people, utterly different. And tuning into their lives for a while, trying to understand how they operate and what they have to go through, what the kids go through...
Dean Semler (Saturday, 1979) spins some yarns of his own about his work with Ian Dunlop and David Haythornthwaite and his directorial debut. The years shooting docos in the outback for Film Australia, he says, were some of the best in his working life. They were just classic characters...I remember John Thomas telling me about when he came to Adelaide, hated the city. Hate the bloody city. I don't go to the bloody city unless I bloody have to. Went down there once, he said, I took the wife down, he said, you've got to put money in that stick thing just to leave your car there. And he looked up. He said, what's in all them bloody buildings? What's in there? What they got hay in there? He was so funny. And he said, I went inside and I got these bloody moving ladders. He said, you go up on them, he said, the bloody thing's moving. He said, you try coming down on the bloody things, you're knocking people over. Try coming down. He was coming down the wrong one. Big guy. But a heart of gold and loved his work. And a dear little son. He hated the bloody city, he wasn't going to come back here, but he was so at home in the bush, so at home. He knew every little turn-off, he knew every breath of wind, every cloud, he was a true bushman. I mean, he handled that truck maybe the way I love to handle my camera - that was like his life...
David Roberts (The Land of the Lightning Brothers, 1987) talks of his push to make films that would break the negative stereotypes of Aboriginal Australia, including Country Outcasts, Images of Man and Walya Ngamardiki-The Land My Mother. After some 30 years making films in remote parts of Australia, what affects me most is the sense that we live in this land with two completely different stories about the land - the Aboriginal story and the European story. And the incredible significance of trying to weave those two stories together in a way that makes sense to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia. Otherwise, I feel that we can't have an identity as non-Aboriginal people in this land, the Aboriginal people's identity is stomped on unless we recognise it, and we're diminished unless we recognise what their true connection to the land is...
Jeannie Baker (The Story of Rosy Dock, 1995) explains how the desert proved an inspiration and gives a detailed description of making an animated film. I was really surprised by the desert because coming from Europe I had a preconception that the desert was a lifeless, barren place and it was anything but that. The part of central Australia around the McDonald Ranges where I spent the most time, it's mountainous - everywhere you go you get a different vista and there's so many surprises and so many very different kinds of plants growing. Also the landscape changes with the light and the colours are glorious - like the deep rich red earth and bright blue sky - and it just kind of got into my bones...
David Batty (Bush Mechanics-The Rainmakers, 2001) gives a description of film production in the Aboriginal community of Yuendumu that's as energetic, eventful and quirky as the series itself. People's priorities are different there, and you have to work around that. When we did the Bush Mechanics series, there was men's business, there were three deaths with funerals, there was women's business. We had an incredible amount of rain, we had hail, lightning storms. We had a resurgence of football, which completely consumed the whole place. We had wind storms. We had a continuous stream of people wanting things. That's the territory, that's where you're going, that's what you take on board when you go there...
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