[supplied by Jenny Fraser]

SOCIAL

Crew leader Craig Wone and community relations advisor Lucy Warren inspecting rehabilitation at Rio Tinto Weipa operations. Image: Rio Tinto

Seven Sisters shining over Solid Screen gathering

The 2019 Solid Sisters Healing Retreat to help grow Indigenous Womens knowledges and screen culture was held on country at Currumbin Beach on the Gold Coast, and a free public screening of films by and about Indigenous Women toured to the Lismore Womens Festival in Bundjalung Country recently.

 

The Solid Sisters braved the onset of Cyclone Oma with the retreat going ahead and presenting Each One Teach One sessions on Currumbin hill, witnessed a traditional dance by Ginibi Balandah on the windy beach at Elephant Rock, networked and also created new work in a private photo booth session. The SOLID Sisters events focus on Cultural Safety for storytelling development between women, and it was appropriate that it was held in February to witness the closest Super Moon for 2019 and also the Seven Sisters constellation, which is known as Jirun in the Yugambeh language and the story of the stars also directly relates to a site specific Aboriginal Creation Story at Currumbin itself.

 

The Solid Sisters Retreat was established in 2014 to hold space for a healing and decolonising environment for Indigenous women artists and other storytellers and knowledge keepers to take time out together for exchange. The 2019 gathering is the fifth time that Solid has exclusively focused on a private retreat for invited participants in a nurturing environment. “One focus for Solid this year was inter-tribal discussion on Native Plant Medicine and to mark the gathering spirit, the Solid Sisters also shared a Native Christmas meal of local bush foods of the season including Bunya Nuts, Davidson Plums and limes with Kangaroo” said Curator Jenny Fraser.

 

The public Solid screening was held at the Lismore Womens Festival on 2 March this year and featured screen art and short films by visionaries from around the world, and included a personal Q&A with Angelina Hurley, who was also presented with a Solid Screen Storyteller Award. Mununjali woman Angelina Hurley is a writer and also a presenter of the Murri radio show and segment on NITV's The Point titled 'Wild Black Women'. Her award winning first short film, titled Aunty Maggie and the Womba Wagkun retells her grandmothers story in South East Queensland.

 

Each year Solid Screen Awards are bestowed internationally, but for this year all of the awards have gone to Aboriginal women in Australia for the first time. Lee-Ann Davern of New South Wales and Mitch Torres from North Western Australia are also 2019 Solid Award winners for their Contribution to Screen Culture, and representing internationally. Lee-Ann Davern worked as an Assistant Producer on the first Mad Max film which was shot around Melbourne in 1979, and also worked on the bicentennial documentary 'Dance on Your Land' about an epic 8000km journey that linked up northern communities from the Gulf Country around Mornington Island in Queensland, Borroloola in the Northern Territory and across to the remote Kimberley region in Western Australia. Mitch Torres of Kriol Kitchen fame is a Yawuru, Gooniyandi woman from Broome and has an extensive filmography and worked in many key roles from acting (The Fringe Dwellers 1986) to producing, directing, writing (The Circuit 2007) visual story telling and running her own production company in her home town.

 

SOLID SCREEN presents work by Indigenous Women Screen Makers and acknowledges historically important screen culture. Screen makers, artists and performers from South East Queensland showed films alongside other interdisciplinary creatives from around the country and across the world, representing artforms such as documentary, drama, dance, writing, visual arts and digital storytelling. “The 2019 Solid Screen Retreat was held during a cyclone and heat wave, and January was Australia's hottest-ever month on record going all the way back to 1910, so we continually need to be getting Indigenous Knowledges out there to urgently help reverse some of the damage done" said Jenny Fraser.

 

The Solid Screen offerings are a consolidation of the field of Indigenous Women Screen Makers. Solid Screen is presented by cyberTribe, which has a history of presenting internationally for 2 decades, and SOLID has been shaped to showcase and enhance the local, national and international wealth of creative talent in the variety of artforms made by and for the screen. It is designed for locals to share the love and gain some insider perspectives, through the eyes of women screen artists from around the world. The 2019 Solid Screen gatherings were also partly supported by funder Screen Queensland, and some films were presented in partnership with Kayche Festival based in Mexico.