National Reconciliation Week (May 27 to June 3) is a time for all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia.
This year's theme to "Be a Voice for Generations" encourages us to strive for reconciliation in our everyday lives to ensure that First Nations voices, both past and present, are heard and respected – not just this week, but every day.
Therefore, as part of our ongoing commitment to reconciliation, we will be taking the small but important step of having an Acknowledgement of Country appear on screen before all of our screenings from this week onwards: The ANU Film Group acknowledges and celebrates the First Nations Australians on whose traditional lands we meet, and pay our respects to the Elders of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, past and present.
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WHAT’S ON THIS WEEK
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We have a terrific line-up of films celebrating National Reconcilation Week and First Nations Voices this week: Peter Pecotić's fascinating exploration of identity (Countryman), director Rolf de Heer's acclaimed latest (The Survival of Kindness), Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter in concert (Wash My Soul in the River's Flow) and a spellbinding anthology film featuring interwoven tales by Indigenous Australian and Māori filmmakers (We Are Still Here).
• THU 1 JUNE @ 7:30 PM: COUNTRYMAN + Q&A (78 MINS)
Retracing his late father's footsteps, a traveller embarks on a 10,000km road trip across Northern Australia where he encounters a Warumungu artist whose father was also a migrant. Followed by Q&A with Peter Pecotić and Joseph Williams.
• FRI 2 JUNE @ 7:30 PM: THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS (M, 96 MINS)
In a future where people of colour are unaffected by apocalyptic events, an Indigenous woman is left to die in a cage in the desert. When she escapes, she embarks on an odyssey of evading persecution, in director Rolf de Heer's latest.
• SAT 3 JUNE @ **5 PM**: WASH MY SOUL IN THE RIVER'S FLOW (PG, 89 MINS)
Part documentary, part concert film, this is a celebration of the love, lives and voices of two of Australia’s greatest artists – Indigenous musicians Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter – as they perform a legendary concert in 2004.
• SAT 3 JUNE @ 7:30 PM: WE ARE STILL HERE (M, 90 MINS)
A sweeping anthology film which brings together eight interwoven tales from Indigenous Australian and Māori filmmakers, each exploring the impact of hundreds of years of settler colonialism on indigenous culture in their own unique way.