Sydney-based documentary filmmaker Trevor Graham returns to Canberra on July 5 with his film MABO: Life of an Island Man, joined by artist Gail Mabo, the daughter of his documentary subject, for a screening at the National Film and Sound Archive.
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Trevor Graham has worked as a writer, producer and director of documentary in Australia for three decades, making films from the 1985 record of women and socialism in pre-WWII Australia Red Matildas to last year's Monsieur Mayonnaise, on the French Resistance history of expat Aussie filmmaker Philippe Moira – but Graham's two films chronicling the lead-up to and impacts from the High Court Mabo ruling are his most memorable.
His film Life of an Island Man debuted at the Sydney Film Festival two decades ago, five years after the landmark ruling named for Eddie Mabo that changed Australia's legal landscape, and this week's screening is one amongst a range of events that celebrates both the ruling's 25th anniversary, and the 1967 Indigenous Referendum's 50th anniversary, as the country celebrates NAIDOC Week from July 2 to 7.
In the mid-1980s, Trevor Graham spent the better part of a year on the Murray Islands (which include the islands of Mer, Dauer and Waier) in the Torres Strait as the Supreme Court of Queensland investigated the land rights claims of James Rice, Father Dave Passi and Eddie Mabo.
"I was really very interested in the land rights movement since I was a teenager, being interested in things like Charlie Perkins' 'freedom riders'," Trevor Graham says, beginning to explain how he came to make 1989's Land Bilong Islanders.
"I was working in Melbourne and a friend, a law student, asked if I had heard about the Mabo case," he says.
"It was 1988, and people in legal circles were saying this could be the game changer for both politics and land rights," he says, "so I started my research and contacted the lawyers in the case."
Graham cites the 1971 Gove Land Rights Case where the Northern Territory Supreme Court first acknowledged the Yolgnu people's relationship with the land but weren't able to favourably rule in their attempt to stop mining on what the Indigenous plaintiffs considered their lands.
"It was easy to see that a lot of those elements [from the Gove case] were not applicable to the Murray Islanders," Graham says, "where you had family plots of land, really defined boundaries."
Land Bilong Islanders remains a strong seller in the educational film market for the tangible way Graham's camera captures the land in question - particularly the tidal fish traps with rock boundaries that far precede the first British ship arrivals - visually explaining the Mabo case better than legal words are often able.
As Graham and his crew filmed, he says he did remain skeptical of whether Australia's legal system would accept the argument.
"Eddie was a very confident man," Graham says, "and I did worry that he was perhaps sometimes being over-the-top about this."
With Graham's focus in the film Land Bilong Islanders being on the legal challenge to Terra Nullius the film isn't particularly personal, but Graham did forge a strong friendship with the Mabo family, and when Eddie Mabo died of cancer in 1992, five months before the High Court ruling, Graham says he was deeply affected by the "profound sense of tragedy".
Graham brought his crew and camera with him to the 1995 memorial service for Eddie Mabo in Townsville – following the three years of mourning traditional amongst the Murray Island people.
"Making a film is almost like a family affair and we'd had six years of building a relationship with the family so that was an amazing and very emotional day," Graham recalls.
The following day, vandals ("I can only describe them as right-wing vandals," Graham says) trashed Mabo's grave, painting it with swastikas, following which Graham was struck by the strength of impact Eddie Mabo and his pursuit of his case had on the nation, and backed by Film Australia, returned to continue filming.
"Eddie created these waves and we felt it was important to film more material and piece the greater jigsaw puzzle together," with the result being the feature documentary Mabo: Life of an Island Man that enjoyed a cinema season in Australia and France, played at a number of festivals, and many times on the ABC since, and continues to build an audience.
Graham and Film Australia would redevelop the footage and materials collected over eight years into an educational CD-Rom and website (mabonativetitle.com) still used as teaching tools across the Australian education market.
Graham says he last saw his film in its entirety at a screening for the Mabo ruling's 20th anniversary, and says that it still resonates.
"I think it proves the power documentary can have," he says, "giving the audience an entry point into this complex issue that might be difficult to grasp as a concept but here's this personal story of a man fighting a great injustice."
"It makes the story real for us, and the audience laugh and pull out the tissues, it stands the test of time."
Graham will be joined on stage at the National Film and Sound Archive on July 5 by Eddie and Bonita Mabo's daughter Gail, who recently worked with Graham on a Radio National special about the Mabo case and its impact over the past 25 years.
Gail Mabo is an artist and dancer who studied at Sydney's Aboriginal and Islanders Dance Theatre in the '80s (along with the likes of Christine Anu and many of Bangara's performers) before appearing in films by Tracey Moffatt (Nice Coloured Girls, 1985 and Watch Out, 1986) and the theatrical season of Bran Nue Dae. She directed the 2005 stage show Koiki, about the life of her father.
Gail followed in the artistic footsteps of her father, and the National Museum of Australia (who are bringing Gail Mabo to Canberra for the above mentioned screening) has two Eddie Mabo paintings Dragon Hands (1951) and Still Life with Jar (1952) included in its current exhibition A Change is Gonna Come, part of the range of NAIDOC Week activity around Canberra this coming week helping to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum, and the 25th of the Mabo decision.
More information on NAIDOC Week events can be found at www.naidoc.org.au
The July 5 screening of Life of an Island Man is sold out but the NFSA and The Canberra Times have two double-passes to giveaway. Screening at 7pm. To win a double pass email arts.editor@canberratimes.com.au with your full contact details and tell us why the Mabo decision still resonates for you.
