2024 Short | Making Revisions

7pm, Sunday 15th September

Screening before The Monk and the Gun  

TICKETS & INFO

2024 | 10m | Matthew Deavin | Australia | All Ages

This film is the story of making Revisions or fixing up whitefella documents, a collaboration between Warlpiri painters of Central Australia and the British artist Patrick Waterhouse.

When the first British colonialists disembarked in Australia in 1788, they looked hopefully at what for them was terra nullius: an empty, barren land that belonged to nobody. However, Australian Aboriginal society, the longest continuous culture in world history, operated so differently to their own that the settlers found it hard to comprehend what they were seeing. They were unaware of the fact that these people had survived the Ice Age, successfully modified and managed the landscape, and handed down from generation to generation one of the longest oral histories on Earth, one that is derived from the belief that people and the land upon which they live are at one with each other. Ignorant of these facts, the settlers started drawing maps, dividing the territories, erecting houses and churches, searching for gold and laying down train tracks.

Despite colonisation the Warlpiri indigenous group have preserved an enduring philosophical belief system, enacted through rich ceremonial traditions and art making practices. In 2014 Patrick Waterhouse went to Warlpiri country for the first time. He had been taking photographs in Central Australia since 2011 while acquiring documents that retrace Australia's colonial history. Waterhouse presented these photographs, along with archival material obtained from museums and auctions to the members of the Warlukurlangu Art Centre in the communities of Yuendumu and Nyirippi and invited them to revise the documents through the traditional Aboriginal technique of dot painting, practiced by almost half of the community's population.

Drawing upon their own stories and traditions, the artists, a group of men and women across generations, applied layers of colourful patterns and symbols to the documents. This process can be seen as defacement, a correction of what was there, or the revelation of something that had always been hidden beneath the surface. The resulting work confronts Australia's colonial narrative with its Aboriginal history, which began more than 60,000 years ago.

The documentary shows the story of this collaboration and the way in which the project seeks to amend assumptions of Australia's history which have been inscribed through old colonial documents, to include information missing from the historical record, and to give voice to the stories - passed down from generation to generation - of the original custodians of the land.

Director Biography 
Matt Deavin is a film maker from Australia. Predominantly known for his work behind the camera, Matt is also a keen director and has a background in editing and producing as well. Preferring to work in the documentary space, Matt's passion is to tell human stories that intersect with the natural world.