by Helen Barlow in Paris
Earlier this year, producer Libby Collins was in Paris en route to northern France for Lille’s Series Mania to present her eight-part series, Top End Bub. Whilst in Paris, she was invited by artistic director and festival founder Greta Morton to be a guest curator of the 10th edition of the Festival du Cinéma Aborigène Australien. In her role, she pulled together a curatorial team of high-profile Tiwi talent.
The four-day festival at Paris’s L’Arlequin cinema was named Tiwi Takeover with Collins and fellow Tiwis, actor Miranda Tapsell, drag performer Crystal Love and Libby’s actor brother Rob, coming on as guest curators to choose the films, some of which have a Tiwi connection.
Only Libby was able to make the trip, though it wasn’t without its drama as Cyclone Fina hit just as she was about to fly out from Darwin.
The festival, funded by the City of Paris with the support of the Australian government’s Cultural Initiative in France, opened with Jon Bell’s The Moogai, while Australia’s Ambassador to France, Lynette Wood, gave a heartfelt introduction to the festival. Bell appeared by video link with his grandkids, who are in the film.
The festival concluded with the screening of Tiwi-oriented Top End Wedding and Top End Bub. Black Divaz, Adrian Russell Wills’ documentary starring Crystal Love was a highlight, as was a roundtable discussion at musée du quai Branly, The Sistergirls of the Tiwi Islands, where Love spoke via video link and La Rochelle-based First Nations filmmaker and journalist Allan Clarke (The Dark Emu Story, The Bowraville Murders, Invisible Boys) personally made a contribution.
Clarke, a Muruwari and Gomeroi man, who has a French husband and moved to France just before Covid, is still mostly working on Australian productions, including a potential co-production between Canada, Australia and the UK about young indigenous people in Canada and Australia. More concrete he says, is a feature documentary that he is developing. “It’s the kind of untold history of the queer black scene in Sydney in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, which was an amazing period of creativity and growth amongst the black queer community and protest.”
We spoke with Greta Morton after the festival and to Libby Collins just as she was about to fly back to Darwin.
Why did you want to stage the festival and how is it going in general?
Greta Morton: “This was the 10th year of our festival. It came out of wanting to make visible First Nations cinema to a French audience and to basically decolonise the minds of French people so they had a whole other view of Australia that we don’t often see on the big screen outside of festivals and particularly in the museum context, which I think in this day and age is entirely inappropriate for First Nations cinema.”
Why is it inappropriate?
Greta Morton: “I think First Nations cinema is a filmic expression like any kind of cinema, like Japanese cinema, like Korean cinema, like any other kind of filmic expression. Putting it in a museum is like it’s suspended in that kind of ethnological or anthropological style of existence.
“First Nations people have probably been the most studied people in the world, and until the 1990s most of the hours of film that had been recorded on them had been by white people, particularly white ethnologists, European ethnologists. So, it was very important for me to find a space for First Nations cinema in a cinema.”
You’re always looking for a new angle. It was very interesting to have a Tiwi curatorial team this year and Libby Collins was a great asset.
Greta Morton: “Yes, it was part of this new Carte Blanche initiative. I met Libby through a mutual friend, Rosemary Blight, who’s a producer at Goalpost Pictures. She produced Top End Wedding, Top End Bub and many other films including The Sapphires. I met Libby through her when they came through Paris before going to Series Mania.”
Now that the festival is over, do you think having the Tiwi curatorial team was a good idea?
Greta Morton: “Yes, it was part of this new direction. The festival started inviting guest curators last year for the first time. There are not many First Nations film curators working in the industry, so we’ve opened it up to different people and they don’t have to be filmmakers to fulfill that role. But curating cinema is an artform in itself, so it was great to have Libby, Miranda, Rob and Crystal, who were all originally from the Tiwi Islands, on board. It just gave it a whole new sort of slant, which was great.”
Which films did they choose?
Greta Morton: “Rob chose Jedda (Charles Chauvel’s 1955 film) which we hadn’t shown before. That was interesting as it’s a film that creates a bit of a polemic. It was obviously an extremely racist film, so to show the film, I felt it was necessary to give a lot of context before screening it. I gave a kind of a history lesson, so that French people would understand more about the colonial history of Australia, the assimilationist policies, The Stolen Generations, all of those things. It served to open up a discussion around those political, very difficult and painful, traumatic periods of First Nations history. It was a bold choice for Rob, but the other reason he chose it, is because the main actor, Robert Tudawali, is a Tiwi actor, and they’re very proud of their cinema patrimony. Robert Tudawali was an extraordinary actor. Unfortunately, he had a very sad, short life, but he was also an activist. He helped the strikers on the Wave Hill walk-off, a strike of Gurindji stockmen, domestic workers and their families, who were being exploited in The Northern Territory.”
What did Miranda choose?
Greta Morton: “She chose the opening night film, The Moogai. She felt it was a great film that uses the horror genre to talk about The Stolen Generations. There have been a lot of horror stories in real life for First Nations people, of course.”
What did Crystal Love choose?
Greta Morton: “She chose the film that she stars in, Black Divaz, which is fantastic. It’s a documentary about a First Nations sistergirl beauty pageant.”
What did Libby choose?
Greta Morton: “She chose Scar, a beautiful short film made by a Tiwi director, Tiffany Parker. And she chose Top End Bub, which she co-produced.”
What has been the French audience’s response to the festival? Does it change from year to year?
Greta Morton: “What’s great is we’ve got this loyal film festival following, people who have been coming every year for 10 years. I think that says a lot. They are very conscious of the fact that you can’t see these films anywhere else in France. We always get a lot of people coming up and asking where they can see this film. There’s a real demand. So, if anyone out there wants to create a kind of a streaming channel for First Nations cinema, I think there’s a market for it in Europe, for sure.”
L’Arlequin cinema has been a great supporter of the festival and has an interesting history.
Greta Morton: “Yes, it was owned by Jacques Tati. He bought it in 1962, and that makes us feel like we’re kind of treading on pretty important ground. [It was first opened in 1934 under another name.]”
Did the festival go well? What was your favourite moment?
Libby Collins: “It was incredible. I was really proud to have curated this programme and to be able to share these stories with the audience, and seeing the people who came and the images that were up in the exhibition showing Tiwi culture and people, was really important. I had a couple of really good conversations about the Tiwi Islands, and some people had even been there, so that was interesting. I think being able to have a kind of captive audience across the other side of the world is something that’s very special.”
What is special about Tiwi islanders that sets them apart from other First Nations cultures?
Libby Collins: “All First Nations cultures are to be celebrated. My favourite thing about being Tiwi is the fact that I get to speak my own language and dance my dances and create films that reflect that. Like other First Nations cultures in The Northern Territory, we’re footy mad. We’re family mad. Kinship and culture are at the heart of everything we do.
“Geographically, we’re unique as well, because we’re two islands off the coast of Darwin, and our hunting is different. Being islanders, we’re mangrove people as well as fishermen. There’s lots of uniqueness about the Tiwi Islands.”
Why didn’t the other Tiwi curators come to Paris?
Libby Collins: “Rob had some family commitments and Miranda’s just had a new baby boy named Vinnie, along with her older daughter, Grace. With Crystal, it was a funding thing, but they’re hoping to get her here next year.”
She seems like a live wire. I loved her little speech that she gave at the opening.
Libby Collins: “Yeah, [chuckles] She’s pretty out there.”
Tell us about your production company.
Libby Collins: “It’s Hello Dear Productions, a small startup. The name comes from how our elders greet us and because we’ve heard it since we were kids. It’s also the way that my brothers and I answer the phone to each other. I just thought it was a cute name for a company.”
Are your brothers Rob and Daniel involved in the company?
Libby Collins: “No. It’s just me. But they’re my biggest cheerleaders and are very important sounding boards to me.”
What is your current project?
Libby Collins: “It’s my first film under Hello Dear, a short film and I can’t tell you too many details about it, but we’ve already shot it in Yirrkala in Arnhem Land. It’s an initiative through Screen Australia and it’s going to be announced soon.”
The Sapphires, directed By Wayne Blair, was a monumental film that popularised First Nations culture in a way. Do you think that Top End Wedding, also directed by Blair, and the sequelTop End Bub, directed by Christian Van Vuuren and Shari Sebbens, have drawn from that?
Libby Collins: “Yeah, I think there’s been a great effort to bring First Nation stories to the forefront. I think pop culture made it different. The Sapphires was a fun kind of musical and then Top End Wedding was the first feature romcom, a quintessential kind of romcom. So, it’s evolving, and we’re kind of being brought into the mainstream.”
You had some difficulty before coming to Paris from Darwin.
Libby Collins: “It was a tricky kind of week, literally just having shot in the middle of Yirrkala with the wet season coming and it was so crazy early for a cyclone to hit. We’re so used to cyclone talk in Darwin that I wasn’t taking it very seriously. Then I came home from shooting the film, and we had to get the crew out in time to make sure that they all returned interstate safely. I ended up making the right call, because it was a full-blown category three cyclone that came through Darwin. It hit the day I was supposed to fly out and grounded all the planes, so I arrived in Paris late. The past couple of weeks feel like a real whirlwind.”
What’s it like living in Darwin?
Libby Collins: “Darwin is always home. I spent some time living in Sydney and came up just before Covid and I really love the lifestyle. I love the way that we’re family-oriented. I love that I’m only five minutes away from my nieces and Rob, and I live with my younger brother and my mum’s there. The Tiwi Islands are just a 20-minute flight away, so it’s very accessible. It’s also good that since Covid people have become used to working remotely, so you don’t really have to be stationed anywhere to be able to do the work that you’re doing. I’m really glad that I can work from home.”
Has Darwin changed in the past decade?
Libby Collins: “I don’t think that I’ve seen really big changes. That’s kind of the charm of Darwin. I think that there have been struggles across the nation, not just in Darwin, in terms of the public dialogue around First Nations perspectives and care for First Nations issues. I feel like there’s been a rampant rise since the referendum No happened, but that’s been typical everywhere.”
How often do you go to the Tiwi Islands?
Libby Collins: “Pretty regularly, once or twice a year. In September I ran a festival in Milikapiti on Melville Island and lived there for a month. I don’t really go during the wet season because I can’t stand travelling in that rainy weather.”
What’s it like there? It hasn’t been discovered by tourists too much?
Libby Collins: “People are coming on tours to see the church from Top End Wedding, so there’s definitely been a bit of a knock-on effect from the film and now the TV show. But there are always lots of visitors at the Tiwi football grand final and at the same time, there’s a cultural festival and an art fair. So, it does have its own kind of attractions apart from the film and TV show and is a common place for people to visit when they come to The Territory.”
Do you have relatives there still?
Libby Collins: “Yeah, all of my relatives. As long as you’re Tiwi, you’re kind of related to everybody in our system. My mum’s siblings and all of my first cousins live there.”
You’ve said you had no training. So how did you start in the film business?
Libby Collins: “I didn’t study film. I studied a Bachelor of comms in Darwin, and my background is in marketing and comms. I worked for Bangarra Dance Theatre as the Community Engagement Manager. I’ve had a weird sort of career, but there’s always been an element of producing. It was my calling to be the kind of organiser of the family, and in my professional roles I’ve always taken on these kinds of roles where it’s just been really transferable skills into producing
“With Bangarra, they were making a feature film called Spear, and I got to see the inner workings of how a film is made. And I was thinking that I’ve always been obsessed with films. My brothers and I love watching films. Obviously, Rob’s in the industry, and Daniel was for a time as well. I met Miranda in 2016, and our families have known each other since we were born. We met over the script for Top End Wedding (Tapsell co-wrote the script as she did with Top End Bub) and then I was the production manager, so I organised everything on the Tiwi Islands in terms of the film, from casting to where the sewage ponds are, and the municipal arrangements between the production company and the shire, and then interpreting and all of the stuff afterwards in post. So that was my baptism by fire, which was a real blessing. It led to my producing Top End Bub and to starting a production company and developing my own slate.”
