AFTRS celebrates NAIDOC Week with students and the community, honouring the rich history and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This year marks 50 years of NAIDOC Week, celebrating First Nations voices and culture. The theme, ‘The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy,’ honours past achievements and empowers young leaders to carry forward community vision and legacy.
Australian screen culture has been shaped by fundamental contributions from AFTRS alumni, including Rachel Perkins, Warwick Thornton, Catriona McKenzie, and Ivan Sen, who are part of a strong community of screen practitioners bringing knowledge and experiences to our shared screen culture.
This story is part of a series of three articles featuring the works of 2024 AFTRS graduates Dylan Nicholls and Nazareth Alfred, along with current student Charles Perkins, through the lens of ‘strength, vision, and legacy’ as we look to the future of the next generation.
AFTRS Master of Arts Screen: Directing alum Nazareth Alfred’s work, See-Saw, brings to life a portrait of community “that reflects being an Indigenous person in contemporary society,” she said.
See-Saw is a coming-of-age drama that follows Jade, a rebellious, grieving Torres Strait Islander girl, who navigates her way through contrasting worlds of school and home life. Her mum is in hospital while Jade is on a journey of self-discovery, wanting to be a teenager like everybody else.
The vision behind the creative process emerged in parallel with grief and was no accident: “you’ve got to have a vision, it’s not something that just happens.”
The creative process, in parallel with the process of grieving, revealed strength within herself, within individuals, families, and community, “That’s why I wanted to make a film to reflect our current situation and the trauma, the grief that we go through is real. It’s a human story we all go through: loss, grief.”
These universal themes build a mutual understanding of life experience and connection with the audience, “it’s a human thing that we can relate to and the fact is that we all go through it,” said Nazareth.
When considering the next First Nations generation Nazareth sees vision and strength as essential in building the future: “To know and understand what the people before me, the blackfellas before me, did in order for me to have an education, for me to be able to walk down the street without being locked up in jail for getting out of the Mission. That gives me strength to go on.”
“To go forward, you have to know all these things – who you are, where you come from and what happened to us, in order for us to stand strong. And so, build on ourselves, our vision, to tell our story, but also balance both worlds and manage all that will become our legacy,” said Nazareth.
She shared advice with emerging creatives, “they have to find their own strengths because they have to want to tell our story. If they want to be a filmmaker, they have to want to fight. They have to be hungry for it because there’s no such thing as a mediocre film maker. You have to be passionate, and that’s going to be your strength because you do it because you want to tell our stories.”
Finding connection with audience through universal themes, humour or shared experiences is fundamental for a film’s success. The filmmaking process can be lengthy and requires determination, “so those are things that one has to take into consideration: not just telling a story that’s authentic, that’s close to your heart, but how are you going to reach an audience in order to get the story out there and connect?” said Nazareth.
Last year, Nazareth’s previous student short film, Pills & Powder Milk, was featured alongside To Be Silent, Sunnies, and Bottleneck during NAIDOC Week celebrations. The film addresses cultural and systemic assimilation and explores feelings of cultural identity loss calling for a rekindling of memory and story.
Nazareth’s work embodies this year’s NAIDOC theme of strength, vision and legacy, and positions her among the bright talent to keep an eye out for as ‘the Next Generation’ of First Nations voices and culture.
