It started as a project encouraging First Nations filmmakers to respond to the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s maiden voyage to the Pacific. But what was once called Cook 2020: Our Right of Reply has evolved into something completely different.
It has become an anthology film called We Are Still Here, a celebration of Aboriginal, Maori and South Pacific Islander survival and resilience. And in a tribute to how well it has shaped up, it will have its world premiere when it opens the Sydney Film Festival next month.
“The last thing anyone really wanted to talk about funnily enough was Cook”: director Beck Cole with writer Samuel Nuggin-Paynter.Credit:Scott McNaughton
“As all the filmmakers came together, the last thing anyone really wanted to talk about, funnily enough, was Cook,” director Beck Cole says. “So it naturally became more about bigger topics that were more relevant to the way people see themselves now.”
An initiative between Screen Australia’s Indigenous Department and the New Zealand Film Commission, the film consists of eight interweaving shorts made by mostly emerging talents. The shorts range from an animation set in the ancient past to a sci-fi story set in tunnels beneath Auckland in the year 2064.
Cole, who has directed episodes of Black Comedy, Wentworth and the 2011 film Here I Am, describes it as an unusual film with a big heart. She says she is “pretty surprised and happy” it is opening the festival considering the filmmakers had to scramble to shoot their shorts between lockdowns.
“It’s a feature film made through the pandemic, which is a big achievement,” she says.
We Are Still Here.Credit:No Coincidence/Marama
Cole’s contribution to the portmanteau film is a comic short written by Samuel Nuggin-Paynter about a young man trying to buy alcohol in an Alice Springs bottle shop. “It’s talking about liquor licensing laws in the Northern Territory, which is basically blatant racism that happens every single day,” she says. “But it’s got a little surprising twist.”
Cole says it was fascinating to see the difference in languages between Indigenous cultures on opposite sides of the Tasman while making the film.
‘The last thing anyone wanted to talk about was Cook’: Indigenous survival film to open SFF
Source: Philippines Alive
