Karrabing Film Collective
APT9
Established 2013 Northern Territory, Australia
Located in the northwest coast of the Northern Territory
Artists: Cameron Bianamu, Gavin Bianamu, Sheree Bianamu, Telish Bianamu, Trevor Bianamu, Danielle Bigfoot, Kelvin Bigfoot, Rex Edmunds, Claudette Gordon, Ryan Gordon, Claude Holtze, Ethan Jorrock, Marcus Jorrock, Melissa Jorrock, Reggie Jorrock, Patsy Anne Jorrock, Daryl Lane, Lorraine Lane, Robyn Lane, Angelina Lewis, Cecilia Lewis, Marcia Lewis, Natasha Lewis, Elizabeth A Povinelli, Quentin Shields, Aiden Sing, Kieran Sing, Shannon Sing, Rex Sing, Daphne Yarrowin, Linda Yarrowin, Roger Yarrowin, Sandra Yarrowin
Karrabing Film Collective are an Indigenous media group who use filmmaking to interrogate the conditions of inequality for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and retain connections to land and their ancestors. The group features an intergenerational mix of more than thirty members of the Belyuen community, together with anthropologist, activist and gender studies professor Elizabeth Povinelli, who has worked with the community since 1984. Together they have sought to create a model for Indigenous filmmaking and activism, by bringing together different tribes and languages, conceiving works through an infrastructure of communal thinking and experimentation, and seamlessly blending fiction and documentary traditions.
Karrabing Film Collective / Australia, NT, Est. 2013 / The Jealous One (still) 2017 / Digital video: 16:9, 29:17 minutes, colour, sound / © The artists / Image courtesy: The artists
Karrabing Film Collective is a grassroots Indigenous media group, and APT9 features a survey of their short films produced since 2014. Seamlessly blending activism with fiction and documentary traditions, the films are a way for the group to retain important connections to land and their ancestral dreaming.
The group is comprised of an intergenerational mix of more than 30 members from the Belyuen community in the Northern Territory, as well as anthropologist and gender studies professor Elizabeth A Povinelli, who has worked with the community since 1984. They have developed a highly inventive visual language and their own model for filmmaking. By bringing together different Indigenous nations and language groups, they create artworks through communal thinking and experimentation.
Karrabing Film Collective’s films address issues such as the legacy of the Australian Government’s Emergency Response intervention in 2007, rates of Indigenous incarceration for minor offences, cuts in social welfare, and pressures on communities to open up their land to mining. These subjects are explored through scripted scenarios and natural dialogue that result in an approach the group calls ‘improvisational realism’. Mobile phones and consumer-grade cameras are used to encourage a sense of intimacy between cast and crew.
Daily screenings of Karrabing Film Collective’s six films, lasting approximately 186 minutes, occurred twice per day in GOMA’s Cinema B.
