Coorong SA, January 2009
CHALLENGE: The Change Media team were invited to work with the community at Camp Coorong to explore how they could use digital media for social change. 20 Ngarrindjeri community members from Raukkan and Meningie participated in the workshop.
The youth participants had an ambitious vision: they wanted to make a hard-hitting documentary about the water problem AND interview their elders in only four and a half days. To make things even more challenging, a professional TV crew came down from Canberra to document the Change Media process with the Ngarrindjeri team for ABC TV’s Message Stick, at the same time…
PARTNERS: Indigenous Cultural Support DEWHA; Indigenous Coordination Centre SA; Australia Council for the Arts Creative Community Partnership Initiative; Arts SA Partnerships for Healthy Communities; Ngarrindjeri Land & Progress Association; Ngarrindjeri Ruwe Contracting; Tallstoreez Productionz; Apple Australia
Film: NUKKAN.KUNGUN.YUNNAN
Click on the image above or the link to watch - Nukkan. Kungun. Yunnan – Ngarrindjeri Being Heard.
If your device can’t play this clip, click here to watch it on Vimeo.
Buy your copy of the full documentary DVD with extended Elders interviews here.
This powerful 22 minute documentary presents the real impact the water crisis is having on the Coorong and its people. Driven by Ngarrindjeri youth it examines the effects on Ngarrindjeri culture as well as the damage for all Australians. The question is, what will we do to change it?
OUTCOMES: The Change Media team worked with the community to identify key issues and stories and trained the participants in digital media skills from scripting, storyboards, video and sound recording to editing.
The team conducted over 15 interviews with Ngarrindjeri Elders and youth to create an informative, emotionally charged documentary. After they recorded the interviews with their elders, the team weren’t keen to edit their stories and potentially loose important information or be disrespectful. We demonstrated how to use their footage to create a film and interview assembly clips to produce a multi-layered DVD: with a short, media friendly 5min trailer, a 22-min documentary and a sub menu with the entire interviews with their elders. During the workshop the 22 min rough cut was screened to over 40 community members and elders. One of the participants gained part time employment as a media officer for Caring For Country, at RUWE Ngarrindjeri Resource Corporation, as a direct outcome of the Change Media program.
SCREENINGS & AWARDS:
2010 The project has been selected to screen at the national Communities in Control conference in Melbourne, as part of Change Media’s Kookaburra Award for Best Community Project 2010.
2010 The film has been invited to screen at the International Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York in June 2010.
2010 National Indigenous TV Australia broadcast the 22-min version of the film February 2010.
2009 On Nov 16th, Ngarrindjeri elder and community leader Tom Trevorrow was awarded the Special MyHero Award at the International MyHero Film Festival in LA.
2009 MyMob Exhibition at the Adelaide Festival Centre.
2009 screening at the Key Note opening speech at the Australian Community Broadcasters Conference.
2009 OXFAM Australia has used excerpts of the film to promote their climate change campaign.
2009 A delegation of Ngarrindjeri women screened the film at the International Womens Peace Conference in Sydney, to over 270 international participants.
IMPACT & FEEDBACK:
The community commissioned 1000 copies to distribute themselves as a fund raiser nationally and globally.
Lynn Bean, Assistant Secretary for the Arts, DEWHA, visited The Hero Project, reviewed the project and arranged for it to be shown to politicians in SA and Canberra.
The Ngarrindjeri communities are now collaborating with the Change Media team to build a fully sustainable media centre and skill up a team of Ngarrindjeri trainers and media makers.
Le Monde [France], ABC Radio and ABC Online reported about the project, as did several local newspapers.
Edie Carter, Media Officer Ngarrindjeri Land & Progress Association Feb 2010
Hi Carl;
OMG can’t believe Nukkan.Kungun.Yunnan was screened on NITV yeah
thank you guys so much for making this happen really appreciate
everything you have done with ngarrindjeri media in the last year
Over the moon at the moment!!
Thank you, jennifer and felix so much…
My family was so happy to see that it can be done from this small country town
nukkan edie
Tags: environment, indigenous, regional, remote, social justice, youth
Hi to Change media and the Ngarrindjeri nation. I have just viewed your short film and I found it an inspiration, strongly emotional and hardhitting. Congratulations and keep fighting for your rights.
Cheers Gerry
Have a look at the ABC Radio interviews about the Nukkan.Kungun.Yunnan film here:
http://www.changemedia.net.au/abc-radio/
The film has been invited to screen at the New York City International Human rights Watch Film Festival! Congratulations to the Ngarrindjeri team.
My deepest congratulations to the Ngarrindjeri media team,
Being involved and being part of he Ngarrindjeri Community at the Coorong I am honoured and proud with the groups achievement. I hope that as soon as I have finished my visual arts project with the women’s group that the outcome of these projects can be merge as one voice for the whole community.
FROM OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL on April 18th, 2010:
2459cake has made a comment on NUKKAN KUNGUN YUNNAN – Ngarrindjeri’s Being Heard:
keep the fight up guys. i can’t understand why people care more about crops and irrigation than they do about the environment, especially a beautiful place like this!! its makes me sick.
Congratulations on this film, and best of luck for NY. Where can I get a copy of the whole documentary?
Hi Genevieve,
Thanks for your comment. You can get a copy of the full doco either from Camp Coorong directly if you are in the area, or from our web shop at http://www.changemedia.net.au/shop/ or via signed purchase order / prepaid money order / cheque mailed to us at PO Box 959 Clare SA 5453.
I will pass your message on to the Ngarrindjeri media team, at least one them will go to New York to attend the film festival.
Any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Cheers
Carl Kuddell, Change Media