My country, I still call Australia home: Contemporary art from Black Australia

In conjunction with ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’, the Gallery’s Australian Cinémathèque presents My Life as I Live It, a major survey of first peoples and black cinema from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and United Kingdom. Central to this program is a history of Indigenous Australian cinema. These films screen alongside international works by indigenous and diasporic black filmmakers, which similarly address subjects of identity, culture and rights. The program takes its title from Essie Coffey’s landmark 1993 documentary concerning contemporary Aboriginal communities working towards self- determination. Coffey remains a vital figure in Australian film history, having directed some of the first documentaries by an Indigenous Australian about Indigenous experience. Including shorts, feature films and documentaries, My Life as I Live It considers how filmmakers have used film and video since the late 1970s as a form of self-representation and self-empowerment. The program features many milestone moving-image works — productions that changed the framework for indigenous and black representation onscreen, by practitioners who challenged the film industry to support autonomous indigenous and black filmmaking. My Life as I Live It celebrates these groundbreaking films and makers, and offers an opportunity to discover new and important emerging voices. While the program is varied, many films reflect on the contemporary realities of first peoples and black communities. The resilience of young people is particularly poignant, with films such as Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah 2009 and Sterlin Harjo’s Four Sheets to the Wind 2007 showing protagonists carving out a distinct sense of self alongside family and tradition. Adapting oral storytelling is central to the work of filmmakers from Nunavik My Life As I Live It First Peoples and Black Cinema JosÉ Da Silva Toomelah (production still) 2011 Director: Ivan Sen Image courtesy: Curious Films 171