Award-winning filmmaker, former journalist and Muruwari and Gomeroi man Allan Clarke has been named as the new Artistic Director of Europe’s sole Australian First Nations film festival.
The Festival du Cinéma Aborigène Australien puts First Nations film and filmmakers on a large international stage.
The festival, now in its 11th year, will be held in Paris in December, and this year’s theme is ‘Kinetic – Tradition in Motion: Cinema in Revolt’. Features from Indigenous filmmakers Wayne Blair, Danielle MacLean and Warwick Thornton will lead the program.
Clarke’s appointment marks the first time that the festival’s programming will not be handled by its founder, Greta Morton-Elangué.
Allan Clarke in Paris – quick links
Allan Clarke’s journey from Bourke to Paris
Allan Clarke is best known for his work as a documentarian. His previous works include The Dark Emu Story and The Bowraville Murders.
Clarke grew up in the far-western New South Wales city of Bourke and told the ABC he was exposed to a stream of Australian films that often showed First Nations culture in an ‘overwhelmingly negative’ light, and were frequently made by non-Indigenous people.
‘I remember from a very young age in Bourke looking around and going, ‘I can’t reconcile those kinds of tropes and stereotypes and negativity with my actual loving community,’ he told ABC.
That inability to reconcile his lived experiences with the version seen on screens, Clarke says, is what is driving his custodianship of the festival.
The fresh approach of Indigenous filmmakers
‘Coming in sort of fresh, I really wanted to highlight our filmmakers who are really challenging the status quo and who are consistently subverting and bending genres to tell our stories,’ Clarke told the ABC.
For Clarke, it’s an opportunity to show audiences around the world a meaningful vision of First Nations culture and identity.
It’s an opportunity to surprise by subverting the old stereotypes by leaning into genres less frequently associated with the culture, like romance, comedy and horror and showing audiences something new and fresh.
The importance of his appointment, and what it could mean for filmmakers like him, is not lost on Clarke. ‘This means everything to me,’ he told the ABC.
