Screen Studies: Indigenous Screen

Using the 1992 Mabo decision as a starting point, it looks at how the Mabo decision, where the founding doctrine of terra nullius was overruled, has destabilised the way Australians relate to the land. It asks how we think about Australian cinema in the post Mabo era, and what part it plays in the national process of reviewing our colonial past and the ways in which settlers and indigenous cultures can co-exist. This book highlights turning points in the shaping of the Australian cinema since Mabo.

Marcia Langton analyses the making and watching of films, videos and TV programs by Aboriginal people in remote and settled Australia. She introduces theoretical perspectives to investigate concepts of Aboriginality. The central requirement is to develop a body of knowledge on representation of Aboriginal people and their concerns in art , film, television or other media and a critical perspective to do with aesthetics and politics, drawing from Aboriginal world views, from western traditions and from history.

"The title Bringing to Light has two meanings. First, this book is an act of bringing to light a history that was gradually becoming mythologized, in part because the ethnographic films of the past are now rarely seen. Secondly, much of the film-making discussed in this book was motivated by a desire to bring to the light of film the socio-cultural life of Australia's Indigenous peoples.

A middle aged Aboriginal woman nurses her dying old white mother till the mother dies.

Based on the true story of a young girl who went missing in the Australian outback in 1932.

Dayindi, a young aboriginal warrior, hears a story told by his brother Minygululu, which echoes his own situation. A man who lusts after his brother's wife, the character in the tale kills a member of another tribe and faces dire consequences, with the story's ending reverberating in Dayindi's own life.

A glue-sniffing boy and his girlfriend escape the government-controlled no-hope Aboriginal community they live in and go to the city, Alice Springs, looking for a better life.

It's 1968, and four young, talented Australian Aboriginal girls learn about love, friendship and war when their all-girl group The Sapphires entertain the US troops in Vietnam.