Environmental Film Festival Australia (EFFA) presents a one-day mini-festival, showcasing Indigenous voices and sovereignty through film. This is a one-day cinema event at ACMI, Fed Square on 10 December 2022 celebrating Indigenous perspectives on climate, ecology, culture and custodianship.
Our program pays tribute and respect to First Nations’ experiences with Land, Water, Sky and Seas. Join us for sharing, yarning and cinema responding to Climate Change and Culture, recognising ancestral knowledge and that First Nations stories are intrinsically connected to the environment and to Country.
With two shorts packages and one feature premiere, featuring films predominantly made by Indigenous creatives, these stories uphold and recognise self determination, food sovereignty, Indigenous perspectives and conservation practices.
EFFA is privileged to present a range of films through First Peoples’ eyes. The day will include an informal Talanoa, story sharing, and Ceremony, to honour the many First Nations in Naarm, Victoria at ACMI.
Sovereign Shorts #1
A selection of shorts showcasing Indigenous stories: of legends and traditions, connections to land, perspectives on survival, and celebrations of culture; all touching upon the deeper need for the protection of land, sea and waters.
Sovereign Shorts #1 showcases the voices of First Nations Peoples across Canada, Sápmi, Mexico, the United States and Australia, through animation, documentary and storytelling.
Háldi (2021) | Sámpi, Norway
A unique Sámi short film, created in the boundaries of film and music, highlighting the power of female relations in Sámi tradition and mythology.
Kii Nche Ndutsa (2020) | Mexico
In Mesoamerica, the seashell is a symbol for time. This short film invites you to reflect on the past, present and future in a changing landscape where the natural environment is slowly disappearing.
Pili Ka Mo’o (2021) | United States
The Fukumitsu ʻOhana of Hakipuʻu are Native Hawaiian taro farmers and keepers of ongoing ancestral practices. When nearby Kualoa Ranch, a large settler-owned corporation, destroys their familial burial grounds to make way for “development”, they must navigate the world of real estate and judicial proceedings to fight for their heritage and home.
The Fourfold (2020) | Canada
Based on the ancient animistic beliefs and shamanic rituals in Mongolia and Siberia, this stunning stop-motion animation explores Indigenous worldviews and wisdom, sharing the sacred beliefs of nomadic Mongolic peoples.
Premonition: On the Eve of Signing Treaty 6 (2021) | Canada
In both Cree and English we hear the premonitions of an Elder in the 1870s North West US, while images of a changing landscape are visualised and animated into something beyond their original form. The storm post-treaty is coming, yet there is hope and resiliency just beyond.
Warburdar Bununu: Water Shield (2019) | Australia
A young leader is devastated when the Northern Territory’s Borroloola Town Camps are bombarded with water contamination notices. No one seems to be taking responsibility and with continued mining up river, his family’s way of life is under constant threat. This documentary follows him as he sets out to find answers, knowing that his Elders will never leave their ancestral homelands.
Veins of the Country (2020) | Gooniyandi (and Bunuba, Walmajarri, Nyikina, Warrwa)
“We’re all part of that river, we drink one water from the one main rainfall. Everybody.”
Elder Gooniyandi artist Mervyn Street shares his art and storytelling about the waters of the Warlibiddi/Margaret and Martuwarra/Fitzroy Rivers catchment, and their vital significance to the Country and people’s lives.
Sovereign Shorts #1 is showing as part of ‘EFFA presents: Sovereign Cinema’, a one-day cinema event celebrating Indigenous perspectives on climate, ecology, culture and custodianship. This screening will include opening speeches and ceremony.
Time: 3pm
Location: ACMI at Fed Square, Melbourne
Tickets here: https://tickets.acmi.net.au/0/49664
Sovereign Shorts #2
A selection of shorts showcasing Indigenous stories: of legends and traditions, connections to land, perspectives on survival, and celebrations of culture; all touching upon the deeper need for the protection of land, sea and waters.
Sovereign Shorts #2 showcases the voices of First Nations Peoples across Greenland, Canada, Sápmi, Aotearoa and Australia, through screen art, documentary and storytelling.
L’Innu du futur (2021) | Canada
An immersive story, both personal and poetic, and a filmmaker’s ode to the land and his double identity as an urban Indigenous person. Frenetic, beautiful and engaging.
TAIAO (2021) | Aotearoa
TAIAO explores how and why we use Aotearoa’s natural environment the way we do, presenting a snapshot of our era and our actions, without speaking a word.
In the Shadow of the Tugtupite (2020) | Greenland
A cinematic portrait of despair and anxiety towards an unknown future for the Inuit of the world’s largest island. This graceful short questions the rationale behind past and future mining prospects in Greenland and how they are connected to a search for identity for the fledgling nation.
Wind Song and Rain (2021) | Aotearoa
“Yes, he is here in spirit. But, he isn’t just in one place. His spirit is with me.“ A national treasure whose poetry spanned over 40 years, the world knew Hone Tuwhare but his mokopuna Manaia never did. Now 18 years old, Manaia feels her koro calling her, triggering an emotional journey of connection in te reo Māori to prove there’s another Tuwhare who writes poetry.
EALÁT (2021) | Sámpi, Norway
“As long as the reindeer exist here, so do we”. Through Elle Márjá Eira’s eyes we follow her family in different seasons with their reindeer herd. A stunning and unforgettable documentary about living and surviving in Sámi reindeer husbandry in our strange times.
Swimming Yesterday (2020) | Australia
Brewarrina, NSW is home to the oldest man-made structure in the world: the near half-kilometre complex of fish traps, known as ‘Ngunnhu’. These ancient traps are still visible in the Darling River and have strong social, cultural and spiritual association for many. This soulful film explores the importance of Ngunnhu and the heartbreaking displacement of a community due to the river’s dwindling water levels.
Time: 5:10pm
Location: ACMI at Fed Square, Melbourne
Tickets here: https://tickets.acmi.net.au/0/49667
Film:
DƏNE YI’INJETL | The Scattering of Man
This breathtaking directorial debut by Tsay Keh Dene First Nation member Luke Gleeson tells the story of Gleeson’s community and their role as unwilling participants in a wave of developments that led to the creation of the largest hydroelectric project in the history of British Columbia.
View here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od50k0fUzG4
Built on the Peace River, in a stunning valley in the Rocky Mountain Trench, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam drastically transformed the territory inhabited for millennia by the Tsay Keh Dene First Nation. The dam took seven years to complete and resulted in the flooding of a large area to create a massive reservoir, with the Tsay Keh Dene people displaced from their land amidst the rising waters.
With a steady, experimental rhythm, emerging Dene filmmaker Gleeson tells the story of how his people’s lands were flooded, pairing archival news clips and interview footage with sweeping shots of a land(scape) now completely transformed.
The events that followed the dam’s construction are recounted in visual prose and through the traditions of Dene storytelling. DƏNE YI’INJETL – The Scattering of Man serves as a wider critique of provincial Crown corporations, and the marriage of industrial and government mega projects that have violently disrupted the lives and lands of Indigenous people – all without rightful consultation or any real regard for the lands themselves.
DƏNE YI’INJETL is told from the perspective of the Tsay Keh Dene Nation and its membership about the events that took place before and after the flood. Viewed by many critics as a Provincial vanity project, development of the dam was pushed forward and completed ahead of schedule, with little thought given to the resulting impacts that the natural environment and Tsay Keh Dene people would soon face.
Filmed on location in Tsay Keh Dene Nation territory, Northen BC, Canada. Funded by Tsay Keh Dene Nation.
Time: 7:20 pm
Location: Cinema 1, Level 2, ACMI, Fed Square
Tickets here: https://tickets.acmi.net.au/0/49669
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