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First Contact
A compelling and authentic doco about Australian history as one culture merges with another.
On the 24th September, 1964 in the Western Australian desert, a group of 20 Martu women and children came into contact with the first white man they had ever laid eyes upon. By way of his camera he was able to capture this monumental meeting.
In their documentary feature, Contact, directors Martin Butler and Bentley Dean have highlighted the overwhelming impact of this event. Through a combination of archive footage, as well as recent interviews with the affected women, Contact traces the story of the mob's displacement due to their inhabiting the dump area of a rocket testing project.
The film alternates between the tale of the two Patrol Officers who were sent out to check that the dump area was clear, and the story from the point of view of the women and children in the group who continually tried to evade them, believing the white men to be ‘devils'. The film centres on Yuwali, the beautiful 17-year old girl making this giant leap into modern Australia as a result of the interaction. Now 62, vibrant and with a gorgeous infectious laugh, Yuwali still remembers life before contact, when her tribe flourished in one of the most hostile environments on the planet.
The filmmaking team saw the documentary potential after Butler initially came upon the book Cleared Out, penned in collaboration with Yuwali. "It's just such an extraordinary clash of cultures and ‘first contacts' are always fascinating," says Dean. "When we saw the footage of Yuwali and her mob walking in from the desert to see whitefellas for the first time we were astounded."
The film is mesmerising on the one hand due to the iconic Australian landscape but the most riveting images of the film have to be the penetrating faces of Yuwali and Thelma as they recount their experience of the contact. Watching the archive footage as they have done many times before, Yuwali and Thelma's faces light up with laughter and retreat into sadness. "It was as if they were seeing it fresh every time," adds co-director Bentley Dean.
Yuwali and Thelma's introduction to basic white traditions resulted in their departure from the desert ways that had sustained them for thousands of years. Although the film can be seen as an elegy, it is also a tribute to their ancestry; and the exuberance of the old women despite their hardship is a testament to their surviving spirit. For the filmmakers "the women seemed well grounded, happy in themselves, had great relations with their kids and neighbours and a wicked and infectious sense of humour. We were very conscious to avoid a sense of tragedy at the end of the film because that didn't seem right to us."
The involvement of the Martu community turned out to be one of the best elements of the filmmaking process for the directors. "They took us back to their still extremely remote country and were very open, very trusting and very funny in telling us their story," says Dean. "The filming was in fact piggybacked onto a return to country trip for the elders to show the kids their land and stories. They were constantly feeding us lizards, grubs and wild honey - delicious!"
The film was received to great acclaim at this year's Sydney Film Festival, being awarded Best Documentary; fantastic recognition for the filmmakers' two-year endeavour. Yet it does not stop there, as Butler and Dean are set to enter the film in as many film festivals as possible to achieve the most extensive overseas distribution, with Contact already invited to the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. While international acclaim makes the experience all the sweeter, nothing quite compares to telling a historical story with integrity. Says Dean, "when we showed the rough cut to Yuwali and the mob there was a long silence before they told us, ‘you got it right.' We can't think of a better review."
Contact is screening at the Chauvel Cinema in Sydney for 2 weeks from September 10.
