by Dov Kornits
Australian family drama Mother Mountain contains various familiar motifs of our cinema, from the coastal regional setting to the Indigenous connection, but as filmmaker Celina Stang says, “it is also I think the first time a Jewish family has been portrayed in Australian cinema. I was shocked to realise this but after discussions with all kinds of people in the business, we’ve all come to the conclusion that we’ve never seen this before.”
In her own words, Stang describes the plot of the film: “Mother Mountain follows the journey of a restless and emotionally fragile mother of two, Selene, and her young Jewish family as they relocate to an idyllic rural property in south coast NSW, at the base of a mystical mountain and sacred Aboriginal site, known as Gulaga, or ‘Mother Mountain’.”
The film is a highly personal one for Stang, from the subject matter to the actual location where much of the film was shot.
“I had a property in the area and had been fascinated by the power and impact of the mountain and by the local Yuin community, a vibrant culture, with language and customs largely intact. At the time, we were not living there full-time and I wondered what this would feel like. I had been shown by the daughter of a local Elder the bones in Bodalla, the site of a local massacre. And it got me thinking, as the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors what is in common that made us singled out for persecution?
“I started to write the script exploring questions I had around the impact of the Holocaust on my life and was interested in exploring the commonalities between Jewish and Aboriginal trans-generational trauma that had never before been explored in cinema.
“The Holocaust itself has been a saturated subject on the cinema screen but what has never been addressed and what personally interested me when writing and directing Mother Mountain, is the intergenerational trauma that reverberates in the aftermath of this horrific tragedy. And yet recent studies suggest that our parents’—and even grandparents’—experiences might affect our DNA on a cellular level. I believe it’s important to face your demons both as a way to resolve family conflict and hurt but also as a pathway to addressing historical persecution as a community.
“When I was writing the film in Sydney, I was imagining what it would be like to live there full-time. So, the life of the family portrayed in the film is largely something I had only dreamed of. Then we left Sydney to escape the increasingly tense COVID-19 lockdown in early 2019 and amazingly during production, we had already moved south and began to live the life narrated in the screenplay, an unexpected ‘life imitating art’ scenario.”
Like the best filmmakers, Stang accumulated life experience before making her first feature film. “I took a gap year to travel after school during the time of which I enjoyed some wonderful experiences in the Middle East and Europe including a three month stint as a fisher-woman on the Sea of Galilee and sailing down the Nile in Aswan on a Felukah,” she says, revealing another biographical aspect of Mother Mountain, in which the protagonist (played by Emilie Cocquerel) reveals a similar history.
“These life changing adventures motivated a career in documentaries, feeling that I could bring the world closer by sharing stories. After graduating with a BA Communications from UTS (film major), I cut my teeth in Brazil, LA and Sydney assisting production on documentaries for the ABC and SBS with Quest Films.
“I also worked as a camera assistant with the Shoah Foundation, helping create a video library of Holocaust survivor stories. I wanted to be Che Guevara with a camera and felt that drama was the superficial side of cinema. However, after being captivated by an interview I had done with a former homeless girl in a favela in Rio, I was inspired to tell her story and wrote my first script, impassioned by the notion of recreating real life in features.
“On this trajectory, I flung myself headfirst into learning the drama side of production and embarked on a directing career, quickly earning stripes on Alex Proyas’s Mystery Clock Cinema roster, directing ARIA-nominated music videos for some of Australia’s most popular indie artists, including Gelbison, Disco Montego and Bec Cartwright.”
Financing the film also took a circuitous route, partly due to Covid. “During the pandemic we raised initial funds with a very successful campaign on Australian Cultural Fund and had an early indication of support from Screen Australia which we hope in time will follow through. Covid provided a unique opportunity for casting, a lot of the actors that would usually be overseas were here and we were able to build a strong cast and that coupled with the unique subject matter of the script, the commonalities of intergenerational trauma between Jewish and Aboriginal families attracted private investment from friends and community. We were also able to work on a lean budget by utilising the support of the local community and by filming in my own house to keep costs down.”
Inspired by Polish cinema, Stang hired DOP Radek Ladczuk (The Babadook, The Nightingale) to “capture the haunting beauty of this place and its people. I had worked with Radek before and for my first feature it was so important to work with somebody I trusted emotionally and in his artistic abilities.
“As a student I loved the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski, particularly Double Life of Veronique,” she continues about her influences. “While I was writing Mother Mountain I was really into Alice Rohrwacher, I watched Happy as Lazaro over and over; the way her DP captured the bucolic rural beauty of Tuscany and its languid quality.”
With style in place, the substance in the film is delivered through Stang’s surprising thesis on the connection between Indigenous and Jewish cultures.
“Selene’s family looks to Jonah, her Yuin fisherman boss and his family for a connection to Country. For Selene and her daughter, this is about growing a sense of identity and belonging. Ultimately, it is Gulaga, the sacred Yuin mountain, a dormant volcano who brings up the repressed emotional torments of this Jewish family living at her feet and in the explosion they confront and from the pieces rebuild who they are from an elemental level.
“The Jewish people and Indigenous people of Australia were both singled out for persecution and genocide,” she continues. “How they reacted to that trauma I believe has been very different. The Jewish people generally have a very cerebral culture turning to books, education and material cushioning to bolster a sense of security. My grandmother used to say, ‘They can never take away what’s in your head’. We became refugees, so as far as having a sense of belonging and connection to land, in the diaspora at least, we can only look to others, the caretakers who have had thousands of years of relationship to land for answers.
“The damaging reverberations of the Stolen generation in the Yuin community are still felt but the community turns to its culture, rebuilding, gathering and learning to heal the pain. Their Elders fought successfully for protection and land rights of their sacred sites, pushing away the loggers and the gold miners and forming national parks for both Mumbulla and Gulaga. The deep connection to Country is older than anything colonial Australia can impose and I believe there is great succour in that.”
Mother Mountain is screening at the Gold Coast Film Festival, and is in cinemas from April 28, 2022
