Social Editing and Screening

Translations

After the Tjawa Tjawa film shoot concluded, I returned with the PAKAM crew from Balgo to Broome along with three Kukatja translators. Supported by the relatively generous budget of the project, an entire week of dedicated translation was scheduled in Broome. Although Mark and other film narrators had recorded in both Kukatja and English, the consensus goal was for the final cut to be fully in subtitled Kukatja, with the English versions serving as helpful context for translators and editors. The final cut was to be 13.5 minutes long, and the only way to edit the story appropriately was to translate several hours of Kukatja footage so that the narrative could be constructed within the broader story context.

Even with five full days and three translators, this process was intensive. Each morning, PAKAM manager Neil Turner and other crew members picked up the translators, either at their relatives’ houses or from dorms across the street at the University of Notre Dame Broome. For a few hours in the morning and a few more after lunch, PAKAM was buzzing with the work of translation in three different rooms, where a crew member worked alongside each translator. To complete the extensive translation work in a week, each line was handwritten in notebooks in lieu of the longer process of embedding text into the digital footage within the editing program. Due to the labor of translation, making films in Aboriginal languages regularly doubles postproduction work. That said, virtually all involved in those films argued that this was more than worth the effort. Mark often emphasized the imperative of featuring Kukatja within films, stating, “You know, that’s what the main thing is, looking after our language. We’re alright as long as we’ve still got languages. Yuwai.”

At the end of this lively week, I drove the translators home to Balgo. Back in Broome, the next step consisted of embedding these initial translations into the subtitles for all of the footage within the editing timeline. Therefore, it was crucial that the initial notebook translation had recorded the exact start and end time stamps for each phrase. This tedious process contrasted with the previous week’s gregarious translation. It was difficult and even isolating at times. However, it was essential in preparing the project so that an editor could begin arranging key scenes together for the “rough,” or initial, cut of the film.

Since the translators returned to Balgo after that first week, having a producer who broadly understood the film’s language was crucial. Neil not only had virtually unmatched experience in producing Aboriginal media projects, but he also held broad understandings of the overarching Pama-Nyungan family of Western Desert languages. He had facilitated some of the very first Aboriginal video projects while living in the Pitjantjatjara community of Ernabella (now Pukatja) in South Australia in the early 1980s. Through these experiences he became fluent in Pitjantjatjara. While distinct from Kimberley coastal languages near Broome, Pitjantjatjara shares many elements with Kukatja. As the son of a linguist, Neil had a long-standing interest in the deeper aspects of Aboriginal languages and the nuances of translation. As he noted on multiple occasions, “In another life I reckon I might have been a linguist, or even an anthropologist.”

His linguistic knowledge was especially important in moments when translators had to navigate what was culturally dignified for them to say. For example, in one section of the film’s story, the ancestral men and women were burned to ashes, creating the dry white salt lake of Wilikinkarra (Lake Mackay). The transcript noted that the women then came back to life by sprinkling themselves with the men’s urine. However, Neil noticed that the word spoken in the film did not seem to match what had been translated. When he called Mark to ask him about this, I could hear laughter through the phone as he explained to Neil, “Hah, women can’t tell you what that is!” As it turned out, they had translated “semen” as “urine,” since it was undignified for them to relay this in such a setting.

Susan Gal describes translation as a family of semiotic processes that “purport to change the form, the social place, or the meaning of a text, object, person, or practice while simultaneously seeming to keep something about it the same” (2015, 226). The challenge of what she distills as “sameness-in-difference” imparts much of the sentiment that Wilhelm von Humboldt identified in back in 1796:

All translation seems to me simply an attempt to solve an impossible task. Every translator is doomed to be done in by one of two stumbling blocks: he will either stay too close to the original, at the cost of taste and the language of his nation, or he will adhere too closely to the characteristics peculiar to his nation, at the cost of the original. The medium between the two is not only difficult, but downright impossible. (quoted in Wilss 1982, 35)

Most of the discussions on translation had to do with this fine balance between precision and comprehension. Mark Cochrane—the primary video editor—and Neil held overlapping though disparate commitments on the spectrum between precision and comprehension trade-offs. In short, Neil translated like a linguist and Mark like a video editor. Wanting to get it right, Neil focused on making sure that translations were as close to what was said in Kukatja as possible. Mark, an accomplished and creative video editor, was more inclined toward adapting approximations that audiences might better understand amid quickly paced visual storytelling. As he would often say about video editing, “Film is not about a perfect translation. It’s about the story.”

In addition to the tension between precision and comprehension, there were sometimes debates on the nature of orthographic accuracy itself. This was less of an issue in Tjawa Tjawa, with its large budget employing multiple translators, but for leaner films this was a more common point of gentle contention. Disagreements on the correct spelling of words were founded upon deeper philosophical debates regarding the primacy of missionary dictionaries versus current community members’ expertise and consensus. Such exchanges quickly delved into the murky waters of definitive spellings in the context of long-standing oral languages. Knowing this, opinions on related matters tended to be held lightly.

The Lone Editor

The process of building a rough cut far from Balgo often involved long hours of solitary labor, unlike the social editing that was to follow.

Not unlike anthropologists curating written field notes to write an ethnography, for filmmakers it is a professional truism that editing choices are among the most consequential. Editing includes reviewing the footage, cutting relevant clips, and arranging them into a coherent narrative, as well as adding transitions, effects, and visual and audio overlays. Despite the monumental importance of this process, it is usually rendered invisible to audiences. Most editors who have been confronted with ample footage have faced moments in which the sheer number of choices became momentarily paralyzing. Mark Cochrane often elaborated on the innumerable decisions an editor faces when constructing a narrative. When he mused that editing was “the art of making something out of nothing,” he was not disparaging footage as nothing, but rather the opposite, speaking to its ability to contain multitudes. To put it another way, “Film is about something, whereas reality is not” (Vaughan 1974, 80).

While a skillful editor (or ethnographer) can make a final structure and form seem inevitable, the reality is quite the opposite. The invisibility of video editing and ethnographic writing is what makes their concealment and revelation so illuminating. Behind Oz’s curtain is a temporal magician doing their best: pulling levers, projecting images, and summoning apparitions to project as faithful of a reality as they can manage. As much as PAKAM and Tjawa Tjawa embodied collaboration, editing often requires a period of focused attention by a single individual who can hold all of the elements in a relational balance within their mind, at least as a starting point.

Providing a portrait in contrast to the bustling work of translation, Mark labored on the Tjawa Tjawa edit for days on end in PAKAM’s back corner room, regularly staying past 8 p.m. Yet, as Goolarri’s head of television, he was not originally meant to edit this film. After Tjawa Tjawa’s production and translation, everyone on that trip was understandably exhausted. One crew member attempted a basic assemble (placing scenes in very approximate sequence), though NITV’s deadline loomed and that person had other projects calling as well. In an effort to inject renewed energy after an intensive production process, Neil recruited Mark by simply walking behind their contiguous sheds, through Goolarri’s sliding glass door, and asking if he could “jump onto the project.” Sharing labor between PAKAM and Goolarri was relatively common. For example, shortly before the Tjawa Tjawa shoot, Goolarri’s sound recordist, Arthur, joined the crew. After weeks of full-time editing in consultation with Neil and other crew members, Mark presented a rough cut of the film to be shared in Balgo.

While becoming the editor in this impromptu way was atypical, the broader dynamic of a whitefella editor spending long hours assembling a rough cut was a fairly common occurrence. At Goolarri, Mark was one of very few whitefellas on staff. He and another whitefella, Nigel, were the most active editors during this time. Both could often be found working much of the day within video-editing timelines. As with Mark in Tjawa Tjawa, Nigel was the primary editor of Naji (2014), Goolarri’s Songlines on Screen project during this same period.

Just before I left Broome to spend months in Balgo shortly after the Tjawa Tjawa shoot, Neil and I were sitting in his office, reviewing the details for my impending trip. After we double-checked the troopy and all of the equipment, I was ready to go. He sent me off with a spirited goodbye in front of the monumental iron shed door. As I was making a three-point turn to leave, he added, “Oh yes, one more thing: It’s great of course if you can jump-start and support projects, but remember, black hands on camera!” I had heard Neil say this several times before, and as he previously explained, he meant that it was important that Aboriginal crew members do the actual camera and production work whenever possible. Although he was approaching this boundary of engagement in a lighthearted way, his comment spoke to PAKAM’s clear perspective on collaboration in Aboriginal media.

He and other media managers emphasized Aboriginal camerawork more than video editing, partly due to the latter’s often solitary quality. As Mark Cochrane noted, within the social life of a film, digital video editing was often quite isolating and was among the least-popular film roles for Aboriginal crew and community members. This preference was pronounced in Balgo, where staring at a computer alone for long hours was generally considered to be whitefella behavior. In contrast, film trips and shoots were imbued with social complexity. Furthermore, who held the camera—an act seen by all in the film shoot and in production photos—conveyed much about who held the ultimate creative power in a project. However, even when there was a lone whitefella editor in a back room, their rough cut was not the end but simply the beginning of a dynamic social-editing process.

Social Editing

Nearly every media project I worked on included multiple mid-process screenings. These were not retrospective stamps of approval. Rather, they initiated complex discussions on how to reimagine various aspects of the film, with the rough cut serving only as a starting point. “Alright, let’s fix ’em up,” was often the first comment uttered at the start of a Balgo social-editing session. I consider fix ’em up as a local analytic encompassing an implicit theory regarding the purpose and process of editing itself. It metaphorically imagined the rough cut as a troopy that required repairs. Along with other regularly used aphorisms and metaphors of mobility, it implied the importance of the cinematic process as a vehicle to be adjusted and tweaked along the way, toward the collective purpose of the journey.

There is a long history of mid-process screenings in anthropological filmmaking. Some of the earliest were conceptualized and practiced by French anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch. He framed such sessions as an audiovisual countergift, which served as “a catalyst for the development of mutual understanding” (Henley 2010, 316). This sensibility also applied to the screenings in Balgo. They took place in various circumstances, from small dark rooms to makeshift cinemas under the stars, and from as few as two people to dozens, whose distance spanned from a short walk to a day’s drive. Due to my flexible schedule, I was often tasked by PAKAM with facilitating mid-process screenings in Balgo, including multiple for Tjawa Tjawa. While time consuming, these screening trips were essential. At one level, they provided feedback for Mark Cochrane’s edit back in Broome; however, they were much more than stakeholder thoughts. They represented a different, yet no less crucial editing process.

When digital video editing took place in the same community in which it was filmed, fix ’em up screenings were even more embedded within the initial editing process. This was true in Kurrarlkatjanu as well as another film I assisted on titled Dunba (2015). The latter was a thirteen-minute NITV documentary that followed the life story of Dunba Nunju—an Elder and healer from the community of Beagle Bay who PAKAM director Henry Augustine had long planned to make a film about. We shot it over an extended weekend, as Henry and I traveled with Dunba up the coast of the Dampier Peninsula to his favorite fishing spots. The shoot highlighted the Sacred Heart Church in Beagle Bay, made famous by its pearl shell–adorned altar that he had helped to construct. I assisted with the technical aspects of the filmmaking process as Henry shot and directed it. I helped to set up the camera and sound equipment, confirming that everything was running smoothly so that they could focus on the story. In postproduction, Henry similarly asked me to assist on the technical components of digital video editing.

From most understandings of film labor, I would have been considered the editor. However, in this project Henry was the more important and consequential editor. After stripping away the surface meanings of film titles, the editor, like the director, is best described as the person making the key decisions to enact a clear and focused vision. Much like an orchestra conductor who guides the music without directly playing it, Henry would often joke, “You are my fingers on the computer,” or even “You are my computer, ha ha.” I was a social interface through which he would construct the film. It was Henry’s vision that we were working toward. While it was certainly a collaborative process, he more than anyone was most crucial in both the initial rough cut and the social editing fix ’em up processes.

For several days after our shoot, I slept in a canvas swag in the PAKAM media trailer in Beagle Bay, importing and roughly organizing the footage. Although Henry was busy with various community and family obligations, he made frequent visits. During these, he described the film’s structure from granular details to its broadest purpose as we watched the current draft. Viewing them within the editing suite, we discussed both the video output in the top right of the screen as well as the composition of audio and visual clips within the timeline.

Henry did not concern himself with every technical detail of video production. However, as a longtime media maker he had a comprehensive vision, especially since this was a project he and Dunba had planned for several years. Knowing I would be the fingers on the keyboard, they had thoughtfully communicated this vision throughout the shoot itself. In this way, their social editing was embedded within each of our shoots. When something important happened, Henry was careful to let me know exactly why and in what way. This contradicts best practices in most filmmaking industries of selecting someone uninvolved in the shoot to bring “fresh eyes.” Conversely, palya values are at times better served when editors have been engaged throughout the social life of a film. This experience is often crucial for understanding cultural nuances and establishing the relationships necessary for social editing.

For example, at a key point in the shoot, Henry encouraged Dunba to repeat off-camera comments about the complexity of forgiveness. As I stood there with them, the gravity of this intimate scene was so clear that Henry did not even mention it to me, though he commented “Yeah, that’s the moment” during one fix ’em up discussion. Such emotional imprints were, in effect, analog versions of the digital markers that film editors use to tag their first impressions of the scenes most essential to a story. Henry also explicitly described what was important to emphasize during shoots and editing. For example, he often reiterated that although Dunba might be shy on camera, we should aim to capture his affable nature and “show him laughing and smiling, because that’s how Dunba is in normal life.” Therefore, we included virtually every instance of him expressing joy from our footage. Many moments of background levity would likely have been cut by an editor with fresh eyes in the context of serious themes, yet they added complexity and character truth that Henry understood.

Another common issue of translation related to whether or not to subtitle an Aboriginal person who was speaking in English. On the one hand, it is a seemingly reasonable and accessibility-minded request for a broadcaster to subtitle any speaker that audiences would not easily understand. However, in the case of Aboriginal Elders the act of subtitling their English was viewed by some community and crew members as disrespectful or even insulting. Before we drove up to Beagle Bay, Neil had the foresight to discuss this issue with Henry and me. Dunba was known to be quite shy and soft-spoken. Based upon Henry’s past footage of him, Neil was concerned that NITV might request subtitles, since this project was intended for a national audience. Both Neil and Henry wanted to avoid this, noting that this could implicitly denigrate the speaking ability of Dunba, a masterful storyteller. To avoid this, throughout the shoot we were focused on making sure that the audio was recorded as clearly and loudly as possible. At the end of the editing process, we were pleased that this was effective, as NITV agreed that the film would not require subtitles. Other film processes similarly anticipated issues of subtitling Elders in English.2

Overall, Henry was less interested in technical details like transition fades and audio correction than in higher-order elements. For example, he often made comments such as “That section goes on too long here, giving the wrong impression,” “That transition is a bit off of the message we want to send,” or “This part is a bit too depressing; mix it up with some of the happier moments to show who Dunba really is.” When something was not quite right, he would point and say “Rub that part out.” This was a common phrase in various fix ’em up editing sessions. It was usually accompanied by a gesture that mimed how one physically erases part of a sand drawing, a ubiquitous representational practice in desert communities. After making a variety of constructive comments, Henry would often confidently assert that the film would work out in the end, with encouragements including “No worries, mate. There’s no rush. We’ll just keep at it: slowly, slowly.” The film process became integrated within his daily PAKAM radio show, which he conducted in the same trailer room where I slept and worked on the edit, and during which we often chatted on air about the process. As he emphasized to the community in these shows, it was important that we took our time and got it right.

After a week of editing, Henry followed a viewing with a gradually expanding wide grin, noting, “I reckon it’s pretty good. Let’s show Dunba.” Later that day, the three of us sat down in the PAKAM trailer and watched it in full-screen mode. Pleased with the draft, and with his characteristically understated depth, Dunba smiled and said, “Yeah. Good one.” Then, after thinking for a minute in silence, he started to tell us what watching the film made him remember. As I came to learn, a key sign of a palya response in social editing came down to the connections that it sparked beyond the film itself. When social editing was done appropriately, it became a vehicle for the memories of its makers. Often the screenings toward the end of the editing process were more about the act of engagement than making further technical changes.

Social editing in larger projects often catalyzed discussions around current community issues. In his work with Ayoreo communities in collaborative film projects, Lucas Bessire describes the way in which “nightly screenings incite village-wide debates that influence subsequent filmic decisions and accumulate through further screenings. What arises is a unique collective meta-commentary about existence, practice, causality, and event” (2017, 121). As with intimate social editing, the most important outcome in bigger groups included, yet often expanded beyond, technical editing decisions.

This was the case in Tjawa Tjawa, which involved the most complex and extended fix ’em up process I participated in. Following the primary shoot, I returned to Balgo five times (2014–15) with various crew members to work on different elements of postproduction, with the first trip being to return the translators home. In each subsequent visit, I engaged with mid-process screenings while also collaborating on projects inspired in the wake of Tjawa Tjawa.

In December 2014, I traveled to Balgo with a rough cut of Tjawa Tjawa that Mark Cochrane and Neil felt was coherent enough to begin workshopping. I arrived with several USB drives containing the Tjawa Tjawa edit, in addition to copies of all of the other recent Balgo film projects. Since Mark Moora was the director and primary storyteller, it was crucial that he watch it before expanding the screening circle. Sitting down with him in the PAKAM radio station, I dragged the file onto the computer, double-clicked it, and pressed play. Mark’s meticulous silence was interrupted only by sparse laughter. When we reached the end, he simply said, “Let’s watch ’em again.” After viewing it two more times, Mark sat back and with a smile noted, “That’s a true story. Yeah, palya. Let’s go show my sisters.”

We made our way to Kapululangu at their preferred visiting time, just after lunch. Zohl, its executive director, and all of the Elders huddled around the TV amidst an air of excitement. As beds and chairs scraped toward their viewing locations, I connected my laptop to the TV. Now settled, Mark and the five senior Elders were seated in front with a few family members and caretakers behind them on the edges of beds around the room. We watched it three times in quick succession. Unlike the previous screenings with Mark, the audience interacted with the film throughout. When the women began singing on-screen, their off-screen selves joined in. Mark and the women Elders, led by his sister Payi Payi, made comments throughout such as “That’s true! It’s right. Palya.” They also pointed to the direction of the specific places from their current geographic location and orientation, noting, “That’s good Country.” As with Dunba, the aim of the screening was deeper than making sure that the women were simply happy with the film draft, and I took detailed notes on their many levels of feedback, including the subtlety embedded within hand sign gestures. This first broad social-editing session was also important for reiterating and confirming film permission agreements. Over the next several days, Mark and other community members provided a variety of fix ’em up corrections and adjustments, which I carefully added to my list to convey to Mark Cochrane.

The most animated discussions centered around who had the authority to tell this Songline story and to which audiences. These debates had less to do with the particularities of the film edit and more with whether it was appropriate for Mark to narrate the story of Tjawa Tjawa in this context at all. Crucially, Bob Dingle—an Elder of Mark’s—had ultimately declined to participate in both Tjawa Tjawa and its precursor, Kurrarlkatjanu: The Last Generation. While it remains unclear to me whether Bob had ever planned on participating, or was cautiously navigating the process of avoiding a direct “no,” by all accounts his concerns were clear. He was worried about the potential repercussions of disclosing sacred knowledge and being critiqued by other Elders in the region who might decide to cause him harm by “singing him.”3

An influential community member in Balgo also brought up the question of whether the story should be shared so widely. She agreed with Bob that it was possibly dangerous. When I asked Mark and the Elder women what they thought about this, they responded, “It’s alright. We’ll speak to them and they will understand.” Over the following days, these issues seemed to somehow become resolved. As Mark often noted about this topic more broadly, “Some people are a bit worried about getting sung, but I told them don’t worry, I’ll make everyone understand, and if they have a problem they can talk to me.” In shouldering the responsibility for the film, Mark was able to keep the project moving forward while quelling enduring concerns.

Tjawa Tjawa’s World Premiere in Balgo

When Mark Moora returned to Sandy’s show later that same week, the foundation of their first interview changed the quality of their discussion from that of a radio chat to something both more intimate and political. They discussed Tjawa Tjawa briefly, though for both of them this was simply a springboard for engaging larger issues, including the specter of defunding Western Australian communities. As Mark told her toward the end of this expansive chat, “That’s why I’m making films. It’s good to make movies to help people understand what we know. It might get them to help us. You never know in the future. I hope somebody helps us.” As Sandy closed the show, she thanked Mark and said, “You’re not just a guest now. You’ve become a friend. Thank you for sharing your stories. These are the kinds of things that will keep our communities going during difficult times. Bless you.”

Not only did discussions about Tjawa Tjawa spark the kind of broader conversations Mark and Sandy shared, but so too did the screenings of the final cut, especially in Balgo. I attended dozens of its screenings in various settings in Balgo. While some were large, many included just a few individuals. As with the first screening to Dunba, these smaller sessions tended to remind viewers of people, places, and times past, often leading to long conversations afterward. The difference between social editing and final cut screenings was subtle and of degree rather than kind, instigating broad discussions beyond the film itself. While social editing emphasized community feedback for the in-process film, screenings of the final cut amplified collective reflections on family, Country, and politics often lasting hours. The screenings had a discursive quality due to the social context fostered in such interactive co-viewings (Spitulnik 2002). Amid the ongoing weight of colonial dispossession in Balgo, the screenings visualized “emergent subjects in a place where world-ending violence is a taken-for-granted historical event” (Bessire 2017, 121). There was no need to explain such stakes of representation in Balgo. As Grace Dillon puts it, “The Native Apocalypse, if contemplated seriously, has already taken place” (2012, 8).

I often assisted media makers and art center workers in organizing larger community viewings. After one such screening of Tjawa Tjawa, a close relative of Mark’s came up to me and said,

I loved that film because when you watch it you feel the land. We have to balance kartiya and Tjukurrpa to be strong. That’s the only way to a bright future. We need the old people. They know how to live and what is right and wrong. There is a big black hole that some young people have. Old people never suicide or anything like that, because they talk to the land. When you talk to the land, it talks to you. It’s a good film, a true film.

To explain a Balgo film festival, it is critical to first understand community legacies of suicide and other acts of profound self-harm. Suicide had reached multiple crisis points throughout the previous decade. In Balgo in 2009 the suicide rate was one hundred times higher than the state average and arguably the worst globally per capita (Hope 2012, 38). Mainstream psychological approaches provide profoundly incomplete frameworks for understanding the rise in Aboriginal suicide, as they are embedded within ongoing legacies of colonization that inflict immense harm to families, communities, and Country (Tatz 2001; Trudgen 2000). Media- and music-making have long been locally identified as preventative measures. This insight led to the successful funding of an expansion at Warlayirti Artists to include the media-creation and music-recording spaces that exist today adjacent to the culture center space. In the years following these additions there was an explosion of media- and music-making, supported by grant-funded whitefella facilitators.

Community members overwhelmingly agreed to focus these initial media around vehicles, imagined broadly as the Motika (Motor car) Project. In the spirit of the popular Warlpiri Bush Mechanics show—which demonstrated various creative and comedic vehicle repairs on Country—this led to a series of video and music recordings about adventures in vehicles around the region that included comedies, music videos, and a horror short. It also involved videos warning local youth about the dangers of huffing petrol, a practice that had caused rampant brain damage to young community members in previous years. Suicide rates did decrease during and beyond these projects, a correlation often emphasized by community members. However, as one art manager noted, “Of course the funding ran out quickly with little possibility for continued support.” While art centers make money, community media housed within art centers tend to rely on inconsistent external funding.4

Public film screenings in Balgo often coincided with broader community events. Such was the case for Balgo’s golden jubilee celebration, where I assisted in organizing the screening of several locally made films in the art center, including the world premiere of Tjawa Tjawa’s final cut. During this fifty-year anniversary event, Mark’s role in Balgo’s history was celebrated by the Diocese of Broome, and he was featured on the cover of their regional magazine. We made a series of flyers for this premiere film festival, yet the only one necessary to get the word out was the initial one that we posted on the front door of the community store. After tacking it on in the morning, by the afternoon nearly everyone knew about it. While most in Balgo had already viewed Tjawa Tjawa through various social-editing sessions—as well as through USBs that had been circulated—there was palpable excitement for the first official community screening. The event attracted over sixty people, with dozens of kids playing just outside. After introducing the film through a portable loudspeaker in the culture center, Mark talked about the importance of keeping Balgo from being closed, as well as going back to Country in communities like Yagga Yagga. Throughout the screening itself, a buzz of quiet discussion filled the room as viewers pointed to places and people, making connections to family members and important locations. Most stayed to view dozens of other locally produced videos over the next couple of hours, which catalyzed more memories. Other Balgo film festivals took form more organically, including a series of drive-in screenings in 2016.

Tjawa Tjawa so resonated within Mark that he talked about it for weeks. Like its protagonist, he noted that he too was in a race against time to reestablish his homeland community while he was alive. As the film took him to festivals across Australia, he would emphasize this message increasingly within and beyond those trips over the following years.

The National Remote Indigenous Media Festival

Just as the transition from fix ’em up screenings to Balgo’s Tjawa Tjawa’s premiere represented a slowly and steadily expanding circle of circulation, this also characterized its first national film festival screening. Taking place in Lajamanu—a Northern Territory community (only) a day’s drive northeast from Balgo—the 2015 NRIMF incorporated several invaluable elements. Since I had attended the previous year, it was already clear to me that this was much more than a film festival, and included a host of interactive workshops, meetings, and meals. Remote media workers often highlighted the intangible social benefits of the festival. There was an indefinable atmosphere of support that permeated this networking of colleagues, bolstering its larger organizational infrastructure.

The Indigenous Remote Communications Association (IRCA) ran the weeklong NRIMF in partnership with ICTV. As the peak body for remote Indigenous Australian media, IRCA organized the events throughout the day, while ICTV sponsored extensive nightly screenings of Indigenous community films from across the continent and presented media awards at the end of the week.5 Tjawa Tjawa and other films from the Songlines on Screen series were shown together during a special evening program. The discussions during and following the series focused on the relation of those present with the people and places in the films. The audience laughed at inside jokes and hushed to silence during pivotal moments. In an event where most people were from Aboriginal communities, the specific discussions on relationality and Country were similar to its premiere in Balgo.

Mirroring the three meanings of cinema, the NRIMF was simultaneously a product, a place, and a process. It was a product in that it provided a clear demonstration of a vertically integrated remote Aboriginal mediascape, with keynote speakers, training sessions, and a film festival including awards reaffirming organizations, filmmakers, and communities. It was placed and contextualized within Lajamanu, with Warlpiri Elders opening and guiding the festival in language throughout the week. This included taking festival participants to nearby important places on Country, which further enmeshed the week within Warlpiri relational networks. Crucially, as with the films I worked on in Balgo, the festival was ultimately more about process than product, emphasizing “the social relationship and kinship ties produced through Aboriginal media” over screenings or awards (Dowell 2013, 107). It was more than an event; it served as a media pilgrimage whereby each Remote Indigenous Media Organization (RIMO) organized, traveled to, and collectively engaged in dense experiences there and on the way.

PAKAM was known for having the most video output of any RIMO in recent years, though more important seemed to be the fact that their crew especially enjoyed the festival. Amid PAKAM’s conspicuous laughter, it seemed to be common sense at the NRIMF that productivity and levity were fundamentally intertwined. This is not to suggest an idealized vision of PAKAM. Individuals there, as elsewhere, struggled with the realities of life that were often inescapable in relation to settler society. However, from the music-filled troopy trips that rumbled over corrugated roads to the joke-filled and firelit evenings in swags, there was an organizational culture of lifting and supporting one another. As Yasmine Musharbash (2008a) describes in her ethnography of daily life in the Warlpiri community of Yuendumu, sleeping near one another was foundational to the intimacy that allowed for such joviality, including light teasing about who snored and how loudly.

While I already had a sense that Neil was an exceptional RIMO manager, I only fully came to understand this at the NRIMF, where he was widely respected by all of the managers and directors of national Indigenous media bodies. They often enlisted him as a diplomat in the sector, even placing him in national peak body board positions during periods of dispute. IRCA manager Daniel Featherstone described Neil as his “mentor and model,” while ICTV manager Rita Cattoni would often bring Neil up during their staff discussions, making comments such as “Let’s try to imagine what Neil would say about this.” In light of his experience, contributions, and reputation, it was no surprise that he received the Mr. McKenzie Lifetime Achievement Award at the NRIMF. Neil was the first whitefella to win this award, which recognized an individual’s long-term contribution to remote Indigenous television. This was a particularly meaningful award for Neil, as he had worked with the award’s namesake, Simon Tjiyangu McKenzie, decades earlier in Ernabella. Afterward, several people noted that it “was about time” that he won a lifetime achievement award. I highlight Neil here not simply because we worked together but because he was a model of thoughtful collaboration, as was repeatedly noted by his crew, remote community members, and throughout the Aboriginal mediascape.6

Overall, the NRIMF experiences not only enriched media understandings for RIMOs like PAKAM, but just as importantly, reaffirmed and forged bonds within their team and across the continent. While listening to speakers and presenting awards were core activities at the festival, it was the workshops that seemed to be most animated with vitality, as participants learned by making media together in Lajamanu. Here I turn to one of these, which embodied the power of the NRIMF workshop in collective creation. This workshop in particular provided the clearest articulation of Aboriginal production values that I encountered during my fieldwork.

Workshopping Production Values

Production values are socialized, aesthetic, and moral sensibilities set within particular worldviews. Yet when someone declares that a film has “good production values,” it is rare that this is followed by the question, “Which values?” Unlike other value-based discourses, production values in dominant media worlds are seemingly self-evident and already known. Production values point toward what Neil often described as “flash production,” a constellation of visual and audio norms around framing, movement, editing, narrative structure, color grading, sound dynamics, and pacing.

Even when fundamentally disagreeing about a film, Western film critics rarely have conflicting views on what production values reference. To this point, in “White Forms, Aboriginal Content,” Mudrooroo (1995) critiques the judgment of Aboriginal creative work according to white standards and has called for novel critical frameworks to understand Aboriginal production values (Ginsburg 1995). Here I highlight how Aboriginal media makers denaturalize assumed values of production while centering others. Such distinctions reveal “regimes of value,” which Arjun Appadurai (1994, 83) describes as the uneven construction of valuing cultural objects in specific contexts. Palya production values are not simply about cinematic aesthetics; more importantly, they center the production process itself as the pathway for doing things in the good and proper way.

Throughout dozens of film projects, a system of production values emerged. This was made most explicit during a three-day NRIMF workshop I participated in, led by Pauline Clague (Yaegl) and Cornel Ozies (Djugun), whose own backgrounds demonstrated the Aboriginal mediascape’s interconnections. For years, Pauline had served as the commissioning editor for NITV, where she developed the Our Stories, Our Way, Everyday program that funded dozens of RIMO documentaries, including Dunba (2015). More recently she was instrumental in initiating and running the Winda Film Festival, developed in partnership with the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

Cornel grew up in Broome and began his media career working at Goolarri, where he was trained as a video editor. As he noted in this workshop, “I got tired of sitting in a dark room looking at other people’s footage. I wanted to get out there and make my own.” He worked on the locally produced SBS TV miniseries The Circuit (2007), which followed the story of the circuit court in the Kimberley. He described gaining the confidence to push himself after being mentored by cinematographer Joe Pickering, the same media mentor from Tjawa Tjawa. Like many who started at Goolarri, Cornel was guided in how to navigate the broader Australian mediascape. He attended the prestigious Australian Film Television and Radio School and worked on a variety of film and TV projects. He went on to become the director of photography for Wawili Pitjas, the family media production company run by his mother Mitch Torres. Wawili Pitjas was the third Broome-based organization to receive one of the ten grants to produce a Songlines on Screen film. Cornel was deeply involved in that film, titled Footprints (2014).

Pauline began the workshop with a broader discussion of voice, noting: “In the end, voice is what matters most. What is important is for you to find your voice, your own personality. The more money you get and the more people are involved in it, the more that others will tell you what your voice is. You need to know what you want to say so that you can hold onto that throughout the process.” As Daniel Fisher argues, voice “does more than simply echo an Indigenous agency; it also gathers to itself powerful, at times incommensurable agencies and interests” (2016, 250). Pauline emphasized having one’s own voice as essential. She noted that while accomplishing a big-budget project could be great, it was usually easier to retain one’s voice in smaller-budget films.

This workshop extended beyond the tenets taught in a typical Introductory to Documentary course. It articulated how Aboriginal media makers could draw on Western production values while simultaneously subverting how these values reinforce unequal power relations. Beginning with Bill Nichols’s canonical framework (1991), our first lesson was to go through his typology of six modes of documentary film, including poetic, observational, reflective, expository, participatory, and performative. Pauline explained how each style had historically represented Aboriginal people, noting that “You can tell which government is in power based on documentary styles of the time.” For example, she illustrated how expository (“voice of god”) projects were dominant under Liberal (right-wing) governments, largely because they let narrators declare what is true about subjects. While she presented each mode as having advantages and dangers, she encouraged participatory projects, noting that “it would be good for our mob to do that, because they are from their communities.”

Cornel discussed practical filmmaking strategies by showing how they have been historically used to disempower Aboriginal people. He began by stating that “we are used to seeing how others have shot us. Having watched all of those programs, we sometimes can even replicate what they have done to us. Be aware of that and change it in your own films.” For example, he described the classic rule of thirds, a fundamental principle that photographers and cinematographers use to frame images. He explained how this rule can structure the power dynamic between the filmmaker, subject, and audience. He showed examples in which experts are framed in the middle as well as how subjects can be framed sympathetically with their eye at the intersecting top third looking across the open space in a frame.

He provided several examples of how Aboriginal people are regularly shot from above, looking down at them on the ground, and visually communicating inferiority. “You want to be aware of these things and power up that person using frame and perspective,” he noted. In addition to the angle and framing of subjects, he discussed how color-grading tools in video-editing programs are optimized for light skin, especially in commonly used “three-way color correctors.” This was a topic that Goolarri video editors often emphasized, noting strategies for mindfully color-grading films featuring Aboriginal people, as well as the history of physical film and skin tone.7

In reflecting on this workshop, I came to realize that many of these values were embedded within Tjawa Tjawa. The late director of photography Clint Dixon (who worked for years with Cornel, a family member of his) went to great lengths to make sure that Mark was positioned and lit just right. When sitting, Mark was consciously framed using the rule of thirds with the camera close to the ground. During the most crucial sections, including the film’s intro and conclusion, Mark was standing up and placed in the center, communicating expertise. Throughout, the camera was not raised above his eye line, and we would often use sun filters and reflectors to make sure that he was not washed out by the contrast of bright backgrounds, which would have been difficult to correct in postproduction color grading.

Cornel also described why he decided to violate basic rule-of-thirds framing during some of the interviews for Footprints, showing faces pointed away from the open space, which subconsciously communicated an unsettling feeling to the audience. He noted that visual rules are typically based on making audiences feel comfortable, but that there are certain topics that should make them uncomfortable, especially around Indigenous politics. Gesturing the hand sign for “begin rolling” (drawing a circle in the air vertically and perpendicular to the body), Cornel emphasized the value of using signs during film shoots, which communicate without adding unwanted audio to the footage.

This workshop of sixteen people, including a few whitefellas such as myself, was as practical as it was conceptual. It included classroom instruction in the mornings and active practice in the afternoons with iPads shared between partners. Each of the eight pairs shot and edited a short film about the local library and art center, including Painting Bush Potato (2015), which I collaborated on with Mark Pindan in subtitled Warlpiri. Shooting and watching eight films on the same subject allowed us to collectively share footage and photos, as well as see just how differently people imagine the same places.

Pauline and Cornel skillfully distilled many crucial aspects of filmmaking, including community control of footage, how release forms are explained, and other responsibilities that extend beyond legalistic frameworks. While they discussed films shoots, they gestured toward a broader value system of production around a dignified and appropriate—or palya—process. Resonating with Audra Simpson’s (2014) assertion of “ethnographic refusal,” Cornel emphasized the importance of not including footage that a community comes to decide has a limited appropriate audience.8 Synthesizing the broader themes, Pauline concluded by noting that the effect of film varies widely and that we should be careful not to assume that it is always empowering. To that point, Cornel reiterated the importance of not letting whitefella outsiders come in to tell stories without community involvement or control. Both ultimately affirmed the power of filmmaking, especially when the production values and voices of Aboriginal media makers remained central.

Red Carpet Festivals

The Sydney Film Festival contrasted with previous screenings in multiple ways. I attended this festival in June 2015 with Mark and Neil, as well as several members of Goolarri who were screening their film Naji. Featured at this most prestigious film festival in Australia, the Songlines on Screen special event was an important part of NITV’s initiative to build mainstream legitimacy and reputation around Indigenous community filmmaking. After waiting in long lines that snaked past red carpets and celebrity photo backdrops, we finally found our way into the sold-out theater of over three hundred audience members, made up mostly of whitefellas from Sydney. The screenings were introduced by Rachel Perkins (Arrente and Kalkadoon), the award-winning filmmaker and daughter of Indigenous civil rights leader Charlie Perkins. Notably, she directed Brand New Day (2010), the big-budget adaptation of the Broome musical Bran Nue Dae, involving many Aboriginal media makers in Broome.

Of all of the filmmakers in the Songlines on Screen program, Mark had been selected to say a few words before the films began. Standing in front of the bustling audience, he straightened his back and lifted his shoulders high with one arm holding the other behind his back, proclaiming, “I’m from Balgo. I made this film to show people all over the world a message. This is our story, and story is very important for us.” He briefly summarized the film’s narrative, noting that it would take a long time to truly explain it. Afterward, he sat down in one of the cinema’s plush red velvet seats as the Songlines on Screen series played.

The after-party down the street was a wine and cheese affair. Walking past a who’s who of faces ripped from the Australian silver screen, I found Mark on a couch organizing paper copies he had recently printed, which summarized his mission for Yagga Yagga and going back to Country. As he straightened the edges of the pile he said, “These people might want to help our community. Some of them have money and want to learn more. You never know.” Money often came up as the key resource that urban whitefellas could offer. As Mark saw it, he had no need for bureaucratic programs, just the funding to enact his vision for going back to Country. He often described this within his broader thoughts on the increasingly central role of money in Balgo:

I used to work for free smoke, and now I’ve gotta pay for it. We’re in the money world. Money, money, money. We’re gonna lead them the right way to a better future. But for a better future, where’s the money? It’s about freedom. We came in, did hard work, and made nothing. I’m telling you this while I’m here now. While I’m still here alive.

Tjawa Tjawa would go on to screen at prestigious festivals around the world, including imagineNATIVE in Toronto and the Margaret Mead in New York City. Jodie Bell and Kimberley West—the producer and director of Goolarri’s Naji, respectively—traveled to North America and represented Tjawa Tjawa overseas at these festivals, publicly introducing it and reading statements by Mark and Neil. While Mark was encouraged to attend these, he remained steadfast in not wanting to risk passing away far from his Country.

In the months and years to come, Mark would often mention the Sydney festival. On the one hand, he noted that he would have liked more time to speak. Unlike Tjawa Tjawa’s previous screenings, every moment had been tightly timed, leaving less than a minute for him to address the crowd. He also talked about how difficult it was to have meaningful conversations about community closures and going back to Country at the festival. At the same time, more than anything, he seemed to think back on it fondly: “The Sydney Festival, it was really good. I still can’t believe it. I still can’t get over it. People came together and met. It was a good experience in Sydney. Yeah, we need more coming together in Australia. That is very important.” He described the festival limitations as stemming mostly from his being in the wrong place, though he noted that media technology provided pathways forward. “I’m gonna put myself on the internet so people can contact me. They can come and talk to me about what is happening here, not asking me in the city. That is wrong for me.”

Broadcasting Back to Balgo

Tjawa Tjawa’s final circulatory stage after many expanding circles of circulation was a return to its origin. Shortly after its international film festival screenings, the NITV-branded series was broadcast nationally on their network. Although I only had anecdotal access to national TV audience perspectives, I did watch it when it aired with some of my whitefella friends outside of the Indigenous media sector. As we watched the film in silence, it occurred to me that this was the first screening that had lacked commentary and laughter. While it seemed that the quietude was meant to be respectful within Western norms of media consumption, I was struck by the stark contrast of viewing Tjawa Tjawa quietly on a small screen, devoid of social context or the cueing of audience stories. In theory, NITV’s broadcast represented its peak level of circulation—potentially reaching anyone across the country who owned a television—though its actual numbers were a fraction of that. For those who did watch it, I could not help but wonder: what would they see and hear?

For several subsequent months, it was broadcast exclusively on NITV and streamed on its website. Following this period, it began to be additionally broadcast on ICTV in remote communities. It remains indefinitely available on their streaming site, ICTV Play, where it was promoted on social media by PAKAM and others. This final move into ICTV’s circulatory circle of remote communities closed the loop and completed the cycle. It was not a mystery how it would be received, as months later there we were again, watching it on the women’s center’s TV amidst the laughter and commotion of stories that danced along with the film.