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Solid Screen Festival showcases ‘Solid Sisters’
Madeline Hodge by Jenny Fraser. Images supplied
supplied by dot.ayu 4 July 2014
L
ocal and international Indigenous women screenmakers will converge on Far North Queensland’s Innot Hot Springs in less than a month for an exciting night showcasing and celebrating their unique and valuable contributions to screen culture worldwide. The Solid Screen Festival will feature Queensland Murri screenmakers along others from around the country and International Indigenous interdisciplinary practitioners from artforms such as animation, performance art, documentary, theatre and digital storytelling arts backgrounds. Kicking off on Sunday 20 July
at 5:30pm, the Festival will also feature the inaugural SOLID Awards for Indigenous women in Screen in honour of women with long-standing and also emerging careers in the screen arts both in Australia and overseas. The night, which is free to the public, is the culmination of years of planning, and is a consolidation to the field of Indigenous Women Screen Makers. Solid Screen Festival is also reciprocal gift the local Far North Queensland community. cyberTribe will soon be marking the 15th anniversary of exhibitions and events and SOLID has been shaped to showcase and enhance the local, national and international wealth of creative talent in the variety of artforms made by and for the screen.
The SOLID SCREEN Festival focuses on the professional development and cultural safety of women, and it is appropriate that it is held in July, to mark NAIDOC week and also celebrate the Seven Sisters Dreaming, the star formation that is in the sky at this time of the year. The Seven Sisters is a popular Aboriginal Dreaming story based on a constellation known to other cultures as well, like Matariki for Maori, Subaru in Japan, Pleiades to the Greeks and Madoo’asinug is the constellation of the seven sweating stones or “seven sisters” for Anishnawbe. This story reminds us that having a group of women who support and encourage, can help to persevere during times of stress. Thank goodness for the sisterhood.
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Solid Screen Festival director Jenny Fraser says the Far North Queensland region has a prolific visual arts industry and great depth of Indigenous arts practice, and sees the event as a great opportunity for Indigenous practitioners to explore other mediums of expression. She says the event will also highlight some pertinent issues for women screen-makers; “There are also a number of number of Murri screen-makers already with long histories of working in a variety of role contributing to screen mediums, who have to date gone unacknowledged in our home state of Queensland�. Those screening works on the night include Darlene Johnson, who will show her iconic short film titled Two Bob Mermaid. Visual artist Fiona Foley will show vexed, her latest experimental screen work, that was shot in a dry creek bed on location near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Along with Murri practitioners attending, theatre-maker Lily Shearer and new media artist r e a are travelling from New South Wales, and writer Charmaine Green and artsworker Tracey Green are travelling from Western Australia to the event. International screening guests include Michelle Derosier, Lori Blondeau and Ariel Smith from Canada and Hiona Henare from New Zealand. The Solid Screen Festival held on the 20th July 2014 will screen works by women artists, it is open for the public, and welcomes men, women and children. Come
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and share the love and gain some insider perspectives at the Solid Screen Festival, through the eyes of women screen artists from around the world.
More about the films visit http:// solidscreenfestival.blogspot.com. au/p/screening.html
Fiona Foley