by FilmInk Staff
Screenings: 22 and 23 August, Hoyts District Docklands
CHANGING THE NARRATIVE: INDIAN AND AUSTRALIAN FILMMAKERS SPEAK
Tiriki Onus and Theja Rio
Panel Discussion: 22 August, 2pm at The Wheeler Centre
A special highlight of this year’s Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) is an exciting package of seven Indian Indigenous films that will delight with their original storytelling and solid, modern craftsmanship.
These features, documentary and shorts that change the narrative, address diverse contemporary issues of identity, tradition, post-colonialism, violent separatism and climate change.
Theja Rio, brilliant Naga filmmaker and rising star from the Angami tribe, North East India, who studied film at the National Film and Television School, London will be a special guest at the festival to personally present his two films ‘Remains’ (a post-colonial push-back) and ‘Ade’.
Other highlights include Nihaarika Negi’s Tenfa (Kinnauri, Himachal, Western Himalayas, honouring oral storytelling), KS Unnikrishnan’s Thanthapperu, Life of a Phallus (political film set amid Cholanaikka cave dwellers, Kerala, South India); and three films by Assamese filmmakers set in various indigenous communities, North East India—Khanjan Kishore Nath’s Kangbo Aloti, The Lost Path (in Karbi), Pankaj Borah’s Noi Katha, River Tales, and Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap’s Flowers in a Hailstorm, an experimental short documentary.
The screenings will be accompanied by a special panel discussion: ‘Changing the Narrative: Indian and Australian Indigenous filmmakers speak,’ featuring two gifted indigenous filmmakers: Tiriki Onus, Australian indigenous Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung filmmaker, artist, performer, and Head of the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, Australia, and Theja Rio, London-returned Naga filmmaker from the Angami tribe, Nagaland, North East India, whose debut feature film has been selected to screen at the Toronto Film Festival this year. The discussion will be moderated by Meenakshi Shedde, senior film curator [TIFF, Toronto] from Bombay, who has curated the program.
The panel will discuss the original storytelling of indigenous filmmakers in India and Australia, their commonalities; how stories can reshape identity, self-respect, and help resist colonisation by non-indigenous people; and above all, as Tiriki Onus puts it, “it’s about what we’re holding for those who come after.”
For more information and bookings
