Free First Thursday: Stars We Do Not See

About this event

Overview Join us during October’s Free First Thursday for a special free film program presented in conjunction with The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art. The screenings celebrate film and video work by and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, offering another way to explore the stories, histories, and perspectives at the heart of The Stars We Do Not See. Film schedule 2 p.m. BeDevil (1993) Directed by Tracey Moffatt | Runtime: 90 mins The first feature film directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman, Tracey Moffat’s debut feature BeDevil was inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child from her extended Aboriginal and Irish Australian family. Moffatt constructs a trilogy in which characters are haunted by the past and bewitched by memories, with all three stories set in her highly stylized, hyper-real, and hyper-imaginary Australian landscape. In the first story Mister Chuck, a young boy is fascinated and terrified by a swamp that is haunted by the ghost of an American GI. Choo Choo Choo Choo finds a family living by railroad tracks haunted by strange happenings. The mother, played by Moffatt, is drawn to the tracks at night as she senses the horror of a past tragedy. The final story, Lovin’ the Spin I’m In, follows a woman who resists eviction attempts by her landlord so she can keep vigil for her dead son. (NGV) 5 p.m. The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (2021) Directed by Leah Purcell | Runtime: 109 mins Written by, directed by, and starring Leah Purcell (Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka), this searing revisionist Western reimagines a classic piece of colonial literature. In 1893 on an isolated property, a heavily pregnant woman named Molly Johnson (Leah Purcell) and her children struggle to survive the harsh Australian landscape; her husband is gone, droving sheep in the high country. Molly then finds herself confronted by a shackled Aboriginal fugitive named Yadaka (Rob Collins). As an unlikely bond begins to form between…

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