As part of the Menzies Centre’s programme of public activities, the annual seminar series helps to produce a comprehensive and balanced perception of Australia’s past, present and future across a variety of topics. 

The theme for the Centre’s 2016-17 seminar series is Screening Australia: Australian Culture and Screen Media in Context.

• Sonal Kantaria, University of Westminster: After the crow flies & representation of Aboriginal peoples through film
• Megan Carrigy, NYU Sydney: Coniston: Screen Memories, Past, Present and Future
• Eileen Chanin, King’s College London: Projecting Australia in Britain before World War 1

After the crow flies

After the crow flies focuses on and is narrated by Clarrie Cameron, an Aboriginal Elder, who explores and introduces the landscape that is so pertinent to the Aboriginal cultures. The film takes place in Western Australia where we journey towards the Western Desert. There he recounts the stories of the effect of colonisation on his peoples, navigating through the stark landscape of Western Australia, that has shaped modern day Australia.

Sonal Kantaria is a visual artist and academic based in London and holds a Masters in Photojournalism from the University of Westminster, UK. Her work  as been exhibited extensively both in the UK and internationally. Her project Naseeb: Trafficked was shown as a solo exhibition at the Perth Centre for Photography in 2013 and at Next Level Projects in London, presented by Autograph ABP, in 2012. The work was also selected and exhibited by the Photographers Gallery London for FreshFacedandWildEyed11. She has works as a visiting lecturer at the London College of Communication and the University of Westminster, London, UK and as a visiting academic at Curtin University in Western Australia.

and the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak. Megan’s awards include the Best Doctoral Thesis from the University of New South Wales (2011) and the Mari Kuttna Memorial Prize for Film Studies and Best Long Essay in English Literature from the University of Sydney (2002).

Coniston: Screen Memories, Past, Present and Future

The documentary Coniston (2013), directed by David Batty and Francis Jupurrula Kelly, marked 75 years since what is known as the last officially sanctioned massacre of Aboriginal people in Australia. Between August and October 1928, a group lead by Constable George Murray shot people from the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Kaytetye nations in revenge for the killing of dingo hunter and prospector Frederick Brooks. Consiton is an exemplary illustration of the Warlpiri’s ongoing use of screen media to salvage stories and histories that risk being obscured and erased by the dominant colonial culture. Testimony from the descendants of those slain is interspersed with re-enactments performed primarily by community members as well as footage of the planning and rehearsal of those re-enactments. In this paper I consider how the interweaving of the re-enactments, their rehearsal and the descendents’ testimony works to illuminate the ongoing reverberations of the events of the massacre.

Megan Carrigy is the Assistant Director for Academic Programs at NYU Sydney. Before joining NYU she was the Education Projects Manager at the Australian Film Television and Radio School. For four years she programmed Sydney’s annual queerDOC and Mardi Gras Film Festivals, building partnerships with distributors, filmmakers, festivals and community organisations. Her research interests include contemporary film theory, re-enactment, Australian cinema, early American cinema, and the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak. Megan’s awards include the Best Doctoral Thesis from the University of New South Wales (2011) and the Mari Kuttna Memorial Prize for Film Studies and Best Long Essay in English Literature from the University of Sydney (2002).