To accompany Yhonnie Scarce: Missile Park, we present free screenings of the award-winning documentary Maralinga Tjarutja (2020), written and directed by Larissa Behrendt. This film examines nuclear histories past, present, and future; colonisation; and the forced removal and relocation of Indigenous communities.
Maralinga Tjarutja focuses on the Maralinga people, who have lived on their lands for over sixty thousand years, and on the colonising forces that led to their being institutionalised in the Ooldea Mission in the 1920s. Their forced dispossession intensified through the use of their lands for the British Nuclear Test Program between 1953 and 1963. The Maralinga people fought for the clean-up of the radioactive and other contamination, for compensation, and for the hand back of the Maralinga Village and Test Sites in 2009. Learn more about our country’s dark history of nuclear testing and how Indigenous communities have reclaimed custodianship of their lands.
Screenings: Thursday 29 July at 6pm, Saturday 4 September at 2pm, and Saturday 11 September at 1pm.
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Larissa Behrendt is an award-winning writer and filmmaker, with a passion for telling the stories of Indigenous Australia. She has a legal background, is an experienced researcher, and is involved with several arts organisations and educational programs. She won the 2018 Australian Directors Guild Award for her documentary After the Apology, which premiered at Adelaide Film Festival in 2017. She wrote and directed the Walkley nominated documentary Innocence Betrayed, which aired on NITV in 2014. Her short film Under Skin, In Blood screened at Sydney Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival in 2015. Her short film Clan won Best Documentary at the Canberra Short Film Festival and the Shorts Film Festival in Adelaide in 2015. Her short Barbara has been nominated for an AACTA Award and Dendy Award. She hosts Speaking Out on ABC National Radio.
