Black River
Directed by Kevin Lucas
Mercury Cinema, Adelaide
Reviewed by Melanie Sjoberg
Black River won the 1993 Grand Prix Opera Screen, Paris, and AFI nomination at the London, Hawaii, Melbourne and Brisbane international film festivals. It uses a minimal group of characters thrown together in a local jail to shelter from a raging tropical storm. The subsequent exploration of attitudes and experiences exposes an array of prejudice and ignorance toward Aboriginal culture, alongside the harsh reality of the deaths in custody issue.
The film is based on a contemporary opera composed by Andrew Schultz. This, in conjuntion with the visual overlay of images by the Bangarra Dance Theatre, creates a haunting appreciation of Aboriginal spirituality and culture. The film's location at Cummeragunja on the Murray River is the reserve where the ancestors of the Yorta Yorta people were relocated.
Black River manages to convey the agony of Aboriginal families which have sufferred through two centuries of disruption by missionaries and colonialists, the removal of their children, the search for relief through alcohol and the trauma of deaths in custody. The disillusionment following the royal commission and the attitudes of the police who deny the effect of their actions are well captured.
The character Miriam responds to the fears and concerns of the young white woman, "This place is bad — but you cannot know how bad. I know it in my bones, in my soul. You visit, you are appalled, shocked by what you see. You will forget, but I must live it."
While the film tackles a wide range of important political issues, it takes us through the story without being didactic. The unusual combination of music and dance on film entrances, yet confronts. At the end of the film a woman in the audience declared that she was exhausted, which sums up the powerful effect of the film.