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... As a member of the Australian Aboriginal community herself, Tracey Moffatt expresses her ideas and thoughts about Aboriginality through her commended works. I will look at two of Tracey’s films and discuss the major themes visible within them and how these themes are developed through her personal film making techniques.
Born in Brisbane, Tracey Moffatt grew up with a Non-Aboriginal foster family but, still had connection and communication with her Aboriginal relatives. She went to Art school but studied film. After travelling through Europe and moving to Sydney she became involved in independent film making. Her debut, Nice Coloured Girls won the prize for the Most Innovative Film at the 1988 Festival of Australian Film and Video. ... The importance we give to a film director is the notion, “the artist and his creation” (A. ...
Nice Coloured Girls, released in 1988 as a short experimental film is the story about three young Aboriginal women who take to the streets of Kings Cross for a night of deviation at the expense of a drunken, elderly white man known as their ‘Captain’. ... Nice Coloured Girls is the attempt to reverse the historical sexual exploitation that was bound to Aboriginal women. It looks at the binary construction between the Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal person and more so, the Aboriginal woman and the Non-Aboriginal man. “Nice Coloured Girls is a celebration of the perceptiveness, ingenuity, skills and sexual power of Aboriginal women in white Australia” (K. ...
Night Cries - A Rural Tragedy (1989), is the film about a middle-aged Aboriginal woman and her relationship with an elderly white woman, recognised as a foster mother. ... The film explores the bond in this relationship as it accounts the mother being nursed until her death and the memories and feelings from the daughter’s perspective. We are reminded about the days of assimilation and the film plays out the emotions and feelings attached to the events surrounding the political movement. ... ‘They’ being the other - the Aboriginal. ... Tracey looks at issues such as assimilation, racism and being the suppressed other while focussing on the Aboriginal woman. The viewer is forced to take notice of the previous ways in which Aboriginal people have been represented and know that this is perhaps a better alternative.
Tracey Moffatt has a personal identity which celebrates her Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal upbringing. ... Nice Coloured Girls uses the urban Aboriginal culture and juxtaposes it with historical re-enactments of contact with white Australia. ... As Karen Jennings points out, “a film which establishes a dynamic interplay between a number of binary oppositions: nice girls/nasty girls; white culture/black culture; the past/the present; predator/prey; exploiter/exploited” (K. ... The images presented in the film make sure that the viewer is culturally aware of the time and place of the two settings and that both past and present make up the identity of the characters and their behaviour. While the viewer sees the oppressed Aboriginal women through juxtaposition, these three women are given power and know exactly what they are doing.
Approximate Word count = 2493
Approximate Pages = 10
(250 words per page double spaced)
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