By Dov Kornits
Born in Australia but growing up in South East Asia, and then working in the film industry in New York, Nicole Ma is candid about her ignorance of Australia’s indigenous culture when she returned to her birth country more than ten years ago.
“I was hired by an American company to do the multi-media for the first inaugural exhibition for the National Museum of Australia, and from that I met my friends in Fitzroy Crossing,” she refers to the small town in the Kimberley that is home to a diverse group of Aboriginal communities and language groups. “It was amazing for me to see this culture which I had not heard much about, which was so alive and vibrant.”
As is often the case in narrative feature films, foreign eyes can bring a fresh spin to a subject, and in Putuparri and the Rainmakers’ case, Nicole Ma provides the audience with an insight into indigenous culture that we have never really seen on screen, communicated in a way that makes it both accessible and affecting.
“The relationship with country, and the ceremony that is performed on this country since whenever they came to that country, is still, in different forms, being performed,” Ma answers when asked about her take away from the making of the film. “It’s not just a story; it’s a real live interaction with the country. I think it shows the audience what it’s like for Putuparri and his family, and how the country is part of their soul, and their soul is part of the country. You can’t shift the two, they’re not divided. Ultimately I wanted to make a story about hope because that is what I experienced in the Kimberley.
“It was just so strong for me to be out there, for someone who doesn’t really have a country, to see people who are so at home with their country, and the spiritual side of it. It’s this incredible spiritual presence that they have with it.”
The Putuparri of the title is a proud but troubled man named Tom Lawford (pictured right), our guide through this world. His life is presented candidly, not shying away from his personal demons, as we see him assume a leadership role with the community. For filmmaker Nicole Ma, who was shooting footage but unsure of what shape the final film was going to take, Putuparri’s cooperation set the film on a much clearer path.
“I was totally intimidated by him,” admits Nicole Ma today. “I probably didn’t talk to him for 3 or 4 years. I kept filming him because he was the leader and doing all these things, and eventually I plucked up the courage to go and say ‘how would you feel if you became the lead character.’ Because I needed someone for the audience to hold on to through the journey so that they can experience their life through his eyes and he could explain a lot of the things that were happening. And he said ‘Yup.’ That was it. And off I went.
“It’s a total different of being in the world,” Nicole Ma concludes. “Someone like Tom knows our world as well, and knows what to do to operate in it. But on the other hand, he’s such a precious person because he also knows his traditional world as well. He’s the holder of the knowledge. He’s like the encyclopaedia, really. Because his job at KALAC [Kimberley Aboriginal Law And Culture Centre], he supervises law and culture, but he also supervises all the singing and dancing and the traditional festivals. He has access to the 30 different language groups in the Kimberley. This man has all of this in his head. Usually you only know your own, and barely that, but he knows a lot more. I’m interested to see how he pans out in 20 years with all this knowledge and where he’s going to go with it.”
Putuparri and the Rainmakers will screen on NITV on 13 March 2016, 9.30pm.
