Abri Vossos Olhos. Impact Investment Strategy by Zuhaitza Sustainable Design

Abri Vossos Olhos IMPACT INVESTMENT STRATEGY

Elective Aï¬&#x192;nities

Director: Anthony Coxeter Executive Producer: Rebecca Millar Director of Photography: Adric Watson Publication date: 30/01/2018 Flyer designed by: www.zuhaitza.org

Elective Aﬃnities www.elective-aﬃnities.com

Abri Vossos Olhos IMPACT INVESTMENT STRATEGY

CONTENTS

Open Script 18 Intercultural Motifs 20 Natural Motifs 22 Audience & Market 24 Timeline 25

Introduction 04 The Story 05 The Premise 06 Background 08 Parallels 14

Impacts 26 Team and Cast 28 Production Team 28 Potential Partners 39 Key Contacts 41

INTRODUCTION ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ is a Dutch-Australian co-produced feature film. After five years of structured creative development, it employs docu-fiction methodologies in the Kalbarri & Northampton regions of Western Australia.

With a tight-knit and awardwinning team of artists and technicians, the film aspires to high-artistic quality and international distribution in a way that reflects its transnational themes while working from a strong set of principles of local community engagement.

On the back of successful examples of regional film-making in W.A., such as Rachel Perkin’s ‘Jasper Jones’, ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ supports Tourism WA’s prerogatives to boost tourism and development in the Mid-North, particularly for regions contiguous to the Houtman Abrolhos.

THE STORY Maitland Schnaars, a journalist and Noongar man, travels with several colleagues to the remote town of Kalbarri in Western Australia to report on the imminent death of a Matriarch, but whose last days stretch on unexpectedly, so that Maitland and his colleagues have to submit to the subtle rhythms and milieu of the region's life.

PHOTOGRAPH 1 Maitland Schnaars acknowledging country on our first recce visit to Red Bluff in Kalbarri in late 2016.

THE PREMISE: ZEST FESTIVAL BECOMES DOCUFICTION ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ is the culmination of five years of creative development through the Zest Festival in Kalbarri, an annual multi-partnered festival which allowed the community to come in touch with the ‘constructedness’ of the past, drawing attention to its coastline’s rich transnational contact history and diverse indigenous and early-modern influences.

It did so by using the spice route of the United Dutch East India Company, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), as a curatorial principle to link the complex contact history of the Western Australian coastline to the merchant and cultural life of other cultures, such as the Sri Lankans, Indians, Japanese, Indonesians and the Dutch, to name a few. Each year, a different aspect of the spice route therefore formed the basis of that year’s festival program. Of particular interest throughout the five years was the story of the Zuytdorp, a VOC merchant ship that sank off the Western

PHOTOGRAPH 2 Held annually over five years, Zest Fest grew from 400 visitors in 2012 to 3000 visitors in 2016, adding $985,000 in tourism revenue to the local and Midwest economy.

Australian coast near Kalbarri in the 1712, which functioned as an intercultural point of exploration for the complex heritages and incredible stories of the region over the subsequent three hundred years. This bold venture was produced and artistically directed by Rebecca Millar under the auspice of the Kalbarri Development Association Inc. and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. After the final Zest Fest in 2016, the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions interviewed Kalbarri residents as a ‘reflection’ on what had been learned during the five years of the festival. But this seemed too artless to do the residents justice. ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ was the answer: to let the milieu show itself in

both its conscious and unconscious manifestations, in both its performative and quotidian moods. Rebecca became the Executive Producer for this film, seeing the docu-fiction as a vehicle to translate Zest’s extended period of community reflection under the direction of Anthony Coxeter into a participatory project which would allow the region to enact, through the real lives of its people, its renewed historical perspectives. Docu-fiction, as practiced by great practitioners like Roberto Rossellini, Abbas Kiarostami, Pedro Costa and Carlos

Reygadas, uses minor fictional conceits to harness real improvisations, or rather small artificialities that allow nonactors to remain â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;naĂŻveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; oncamera.

BACKGROUND The Portugese expression ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ (‘Open your eyes’) has often been supposed to be the source of the name of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands. As a maritime phrase, in use in ports around the world, it was often used to refer to offshore reefs, and apparently circulated among English, Dutch and French seafarers and writers during the era of the United Dutch East India Company. Terra Incognita Early European voyages to the southern oceans, including to the coasts of Western Australia, were often shrouded in mystery. The uncharted waters surrounding the mysterious southern continent had intrigued the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. Some cartographers hypothesised that there had to be a continent large enough to counterbalance the landmass of the northern hemisphere. European map-makers, from at least the 14th century, imaginatively depicted a vast irregularly

PHOTOGRAPH 3 The VOC became a trading colossus, the world’s first multinational company.

shaped region across the bottom of the world map, which they labelled Terra Incognita (Unknown Land). The Vereeingde OostIndische Compagnie (VOC) In 1602, to put an end to fierce competition between proliferating Dutch companies that were breaking into the East Indies spice trade and had forced an increase in the purchase price of spices and a glut in Europe, the companies were amalgamated by government fiat as the United Dutch East India Company or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC). The VOC was granted a monopoly in all sea-borne trade with Asia by way of the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan. Its dominance was such that between 1602 and 1796 its ships

made nearly 5,000 voyages from the Netherlands to Asia. During the 17th century the rest of Europe combined did not come close, sending out only a fraction of the number of ships and people. The English fleet of the Honourable East India Company was a distant second to the VOC, returning with just one-fifth the tonnage of goods though it was more successful in the 18th century.

Marooned on a Southern Land In 1616, the Dutch skipper Dirk Hartog, along with upper-merchant Gillis Miebais, accidentally discovered (by way of Shark Bay, just north of Kalbarri) what proved to be the west coast of the Unknown South Land while sailing northwards. It resulted in the oldest physical record of a European landing on Australian soil.

from at least four VOC ships were wrecked in Western Australian waters between 1629 and 1727. Some survived and reached the safety of Batavia (Jakarta), while others perished and disappeared. Not all of the crew on these ships were Dutch as the VOC recruited crew members from other

countries. According to some Aboriginal oral histories, survivors lived with local people and even fathered children.

But the fates of many similar seafaring journeys came to more uncertain ends. Several hundred crew and passengers

PHOTOGRAPH 4 Dirt HartogÂ´s voyage in the Eendracht in 1616 led to the first recorded landing of Europeans on Australian soil.

The Zuytdorp The Zuytdorp (‘South Village’) was a VOC merchant ship which smashed against Shark Bay’s coastal cliffs in June 1712 whilst voyaging to Batavia (Jakarta, Indonesia). Aboard the Zuytdorp were about 200 passengers and crew and a rich cargo, including 248,000 silver coins. The precise circumstances of the wreck remain a mystery, because no survivors reached Batavia to tell the tale. Some did live for a time in Shark Bay, however, where they were helped by local Aboriginal people.

PHOTOGRAPH 5 Zest Fest 2014 featured a performance featuring a large-scale Hindu Goddess Kali and a Dutch Mother Puppet, a 17-minute shadow puppet film, acrobatics and a talented local cast together with renowned artists Ningali Lawford Wolf (Rabbit Proof Fence), Karen Hethey and Theaker Von Ziarno.

This contact with Europeans was probably the first ever made by Australia’s indigenous people. Although 33 m long and as tall as a three-storey building, the three-masted Zuytdorp was helpless as a gale flung her onto the rocks. No-one knows exactly how many people came ashore, or what happened to them, but evidence of large fires and

the discovery of artefacts on the cliffs and surrounding areas indicates that at least some survived for a period afterwards.

A Contested History In 1927, as the story was usually told, a stockman and dingo trapper from Murchison House Station, Tom Pepper Snr. (a European man who had married Lurlie Mallard, an Aboriginal woman), was tracking a dingo along a cliffline around 40km north of the Murchison River when he discovered silver coins, bottles and other artefacts at an old camp site at the top of the cliffs. In 1954 geologist/historian Dr Phillip Playford exploring the area was shown the coins. He confirmed that they were from the Zuytdorp, and a number of other hints emerged thereafter: • There are accounts of Aboriginal people living in Shark Bay in 1869 who had Dutch coins. In 1834, Aborigines in Perth told the story of the Shark Bay ‘Wayl men’ who knew of a wreck strewn with coins. • About 50 km north of the wreck site is a fresh water soak called Wale Well, a major Aboriginal camp site. In 1990 researchers visiting Wale Well found a brass tobacco tin inscribed with the name ‘Lyden’ (the present Dutch city of Leiden) which closely matched one from the 1727 wreck of another Dutch ship, Zeewijk. (The Zeewijk was wrecked on the Houtman

Abrolhos Islands, south of Shark Bay.) There can be little doubt that the brass tin came from the Zuytdorp, and was carried to the well by either a survivor or an Aborigine. It is now probable that the wreck of the Zuytdorp was the first known contact between Europeans and Australians. • Researchers are currently investigating the possibility of a genetic link between Zuytdorp survivors and local people.The relatively high frequency of an otherwise rare inherited condition, Ellis-van Creveld Syndrome, in Aboriginal people in Western Australia is thought to be connected to the Dutch castaways, since the condition was rife in Holland at the time of the shipwreck. There are also published accounts from early European settlers, an explorer and an ethnographer of some local Aboriginal people having relatively light-coloured skin and ‘European’ features. The story of the Zuytdorp, its survivors and the people who helped them will continue to intrigue for years to come.

• While Tommy Pepper and Philip Playford were originally recognised as the discoverers of the Zuytdorp, it was Ada Drage who had originally told Tommy Pepper of the shipwreck site as Ada would go there to gather shellfish while living at Gee Gia camp on Murchison House Station. It was a decade later that the government recognised her contribution in the discovery of the shipwreck but as a secondary discoverer. This is one of the senses in which it was a contested history, insofar as it took the Drage family quite a while to be recognised. For more information, see: http://www.museum.wa.gov.au maritime-archaeology-db /wrecks/zuiddorp-zuytdorp

PHOTOGRAPH 6 Ningali Lawford Wolf with local Kalbarri High School students, performing as a part of the recurring ‘rederijkerskamers’ event.

Wurdimarlu Kalbarri is also known as Wurdimarlu by the Nhanda people who have inhabited the area for thousands of years. One of the highlights of the Festival was Wurdimarlu's first official 'Welcome to Country', which opened the Festival in 2012. Clayton Drage, the last surviving child of Ada and Ernest Drage, who discovered Zuytdorp shipwreck artefacts in 1927, welcomed everyone to Nhanda country alongside his family. Onlookers watched a Nhyumby dance by Nhanda children to the tapping of sticks. The Shire of Northampton President, Gordon Wilson, and His Excellency Willem Andreae, the Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, then unveiled the Zuytdorp’s commemorative

PHOTOGRAPH 7 Three motifs combined: a signal fire commemorating the Zuytdorp’s survivors, the Dutch tradition of public ‘chambers of rhetoric’ and a place of storytelling for the Nhanda.

plaque. This can be seen at the Zuytdorp Memorial on Chinaman’s lookout. The Nhanda community expressed their belief in the power of bringing community together to share culture and this also led to the exciting 'Message Stick' installation, which was part of Zest Festivals' Welcome to Country from 2013 -2016 and toured to the Awesome Festival in 2014, where over 40,000 families were estimated to have attended over two weeks. As with Zest Festival, ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ leaves new ways for the Nhanda to express their country. Through

the eyes of the docu-fiction’s lead character – Maitland, a journalist and urban Noongar man – the film also explores difference between indigenous countries and peoples, Maitland being a visitor to Nhanda land. This is true to life, for Maitland has also performed ceremonial dance in Kalbarri previously as a part of the touring Noongar Wadumbah Dance group.

The Signal Fire Chambers of rhetoric (Dutch: rederijkerskamers) were dramatic societies during the 15th and 16th centuries in the Low Countries. Their members were called Rederijkers (singular – Rederijker), from the french word ‘rhétoricien’. The chambers of rhetoric were amateur guilds or

confraternities of laymen especially devoted to the composition of vernacular poetry and drama. The members were trained to perform not only in the semiprivate sphere of their chambers, but also in the public sphere, often in the context of civic festivals. These societies were closely connected with local civic leaders and their public plays were a form of early public relations for the city. During festivals and processions they added a splendour which no other guild could offer to the same degree. The magnificence of their perfor-

mances, the humour and seriousness of their plays, their candid criticism of church and society earned them respect from the magistrates who saw them play in the town hall just as much as from the bourgeoisie who saw them play in the market square. Zest took the essence of the Chambers of rhetoric from Amsterdam and held a storytelling event around a bonfire, which represented the beacon or signal fire of the Zuytdorp survivors on the top of the cliffs which was kept burning in vain. Visitors to the festival were able to watch the flames and listen to stories, poems and plays that thrilled, moved and celebrated the region's history. Each year international and recognised Australian artists created with the local Kalbarri community to perform at the Chamber of Rhetoric. In 2013, Ningali Lawford Wolf mentored and directed local talent, including students from Kalbarri High School, to perform with large puppets, dancers and gamelan musicians.

PARALLELS WITH ABBAS KIAROSTAMI’S ‘THE WIND WILL CARRY US’ Cinema is a spice route. Indeed, if Zest Festival highlighted the way the VOC merchant lines around the Indian rim could serve as a trope to explore many aspects of the Northhampton region’s intercultural influences, ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ extends this investigation to intercultural influences on the region’s ‘ways of seeing’, for which cinema is an apt mode of inquiry. That the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s film ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ serves a close reference for ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ is a prime example of this ‘migration of seeing’ in progress. His films have come into the vernacular of Australia filmmaking in the 21st Century much as the way Sri Lankan textiles went through the hands of merchants in 17th Century Batavia, modern day Jakarta, and were traded in the small ports of the Western Australian coast.

PHOTOGRAPH 8 Maitland Schnaars in ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’.

‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ is a later film of the Iranian New Wave whose roots were inspired by a mixture of contemporary Persian poetry and Italian Neo-Realism, and it is a shining example of Kiarostami ability to create masterful humanist docufictions, having inspired contemporary filmmakers as diverse as Carlos Reygadas, Pedro Costa, Martin Scorcese, and many others.

Set in the village of Siah Dareh in the dramatic plains of Iranian Kurdistan, an "engineer", played by Behzad Dourani, arrives from Tehran, with a camera crew that we are never allowed to see. He appears to take an interest in the local customs, in the health of an old woman in the village, and in the local cemetery. He is also harassed by

calls from his own family on a rented mobile phone, which he struggles to find reception for. Film critic for the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw, speculates: “Perhaps the ‘engineer’ is there to record local tribal customs that will be carried out on the old woman's death; perhaps his own family have something to do with it. We never find out definitively. He and his colleagues head off, and the mystery of this remote community is not so much left intact as enlarged and disseminated. The obvious

PHOTOGRAPH 9 Behzad Dourani in 'The Wind Will Carry Us'

idea of contrasting rural and urban existences is dissolved by the ineffable strangeness of the engineer's playful, humorous intrigue with the villagers. It is a film that lingers in the mind.” ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ adapts the post-colonial approach of ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’ by inverting the visit of an Tehran-based man to a Kurdish village: in this very Australian context, it is an urban Noongar man who visits the predominately white remote township of Kalbarri.

Small conceits and devices also support this inquiry in Kiarostami’s film, and ease the non-actors into their ordinary vitality and naturalness: the engineer often talks to his colleague through a doorway, such that the colleague is always out-of-frame and never seen. Indeed half of the cast are ‘invisible’ characters in this way, and provoke the imagina-

tion to grasp invisible and unseen forces that shape the stories that are told. In dialogue with Kiarostami’s film, this attempt to include the invisible construction of the visible, and to be an act of the ‘migration of seeing’, is the deeper impulse of ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’. It is for this reason that its Portugese title comes from a disputed etymology of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Kalbarri, whereby early VOC naval navigators travelling down the WA coast-

line had bastardised an expression learned in the ports to warn captains for atolls and islands: ‘abre os olhols’ or ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ (open your eyes).

PARALLELS PHOTOGRAPHS 9-14

OPEN SCRIPT TREATMENT At the end of the summer tourist season on the mid-North WA coast, a journalist (Maitland Schnaars), accompanied by two colleagues, have driven north from Perth to Kalbarri to report on the death of a much-beloved 100-year-old woman, a matriarch described in diverse and contradictory ways by the locals*. The matriarch’s last hours stretch on unexpectedly however, and the reporter and his colleagues submit to the idleness of the town, trying in the meantime to stay out of the heat and becoming entangled in the domestic errands of the people they meet. They learn very much about the town – from the mysterious migration of the white crayfish that leap off the continental shelf, and stories about the Prince Nazim of Hyderabad who owned Murchison House Station, to the rumours around the multi-billion dollar deal for the pink-hued and vitamin-A producing Hutt Lagoon – all the while staying at Big River

Ranch, a property that runs horse tours owned by a farmer from the Wheatbelt determined to transition Kalbarri from a post-Crayfishing village to a new regional center. One of the reporter’s colleagues, who never appears on film, spends all of his time trying to find a suitable gift to repay a local chef for giving him and his wife, several months prior, a free crayfish for dinner after all the township’s restaurants had closed for the evening. Trying to get reception to relate their difficulties and delays to their Executive Producer in Perth, the journalist tries to find higher ground, which leads him to Murchison House Station and further outside of Kalbarri, eventually to Geraldton. Failing to find reception, he becomes entangled in a story through a meeting with a Nhanda elder

*As an indicative example of the docu-fiction method, the Journalist will ask passing questions in conversations with the Kalbarri non-actors about the Matriarch, who have in turn been asked by the director to respond by attributing a story about their own grandmother to the Matriarch. The cumulative effect of this is to create a composite and contradictory historical figure (the Matriarch) that the film's conceit supports.

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Open script formats allow for greater responsiveness to events as they unfold in defined in-situ scenes.

about Tommy Pepper and the Zuytdorp, a Dutch VOC merchant ship in the 17th Century wrecked off the coast near Kalbarri. After a long digression through Northampton, the journalist is offered a lift on a motorbike back to Kalbarri from Geraldton by the Matriarch’s doctor, who is there picking up urgent supplies for the old woman. Riding together past Hutt Lagoon, the Matriarch’s doctor updates the journalist on the old woman’s condition. He then interrupts the conversation to describe how the pink lake they are passing loses its hue when it is approached directly on foot through the swamp land; the deep magenta colour produced by the carotenoid byproducts of the algae only emerges at a

greater height. The doctor opines that this is just like the fragility of knowledge: for each thing thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a certain distance from which it must be seen, or its significance, if not its existence, is lost.

INTERCULTURAL MOTIFS OF THE NORTHHAMPTION REGION

PHOTOGRAPH 16-19 Clockwise from L-R: Pro-surfer and Kalbarri resident Ry Craike; Colleen Drage of the Nhanda; surfing at the world-renowned Jake's Point near Red Bluff; and the Kalbarri Hotel by night.

Rather than earn an income from surfing, 'the Kalbarri Kid' Ry Craike assumed he would one day fall into the family abalone trade alongside his father. But courtesy of a series of rare cyclones in the W.A. North West in 2011, a spike in ocean temperatures off the coast of Kalbarri boiled the whole abalone population off in one hit. And the Craike's million dollar license was destroyed instantly. With a mortgage to pay off and a child to raise, Ry's story is one of many closely related to the natural power, beauty and history of the region. - Ry Craike 21

NATURAL MOTIFS OF THE NORTHHAMPTION REGION

PHOTOGRAPH 20-23 Clockwise L-R: 'Nature's Window' rock formation at Kalbarri National Park; 'Blue Holes' reef; Hutt Lagoon, the pink lake; and the Murchison River.

"When you first come to a place you are curious, it's like you have traveler eyes. When I first moved to Kalbarri I was hungry to learn about the landscape, the culture and the history. As I started to learn about the history I thought there is no other place I've been to that has such significant history for Western Australia, but the stories and culture are not really accessible for people." - Rebecca Millar -

AUDIENCE AND MARKET We are seeking out two distinct market segments through two different styles of presentation respectively. The first is represented by online users of streaming sites (25-50 age group) such as SBS On-Demand, and the second by the cinema-goers of film festivals in Australia, Europe and South-East Asia (in ‘anchor’ capitals contiguous to the 17th Century Dutch East India Company). European film festivals have shown a real appetite in recent years for ‘decolonial’ cinema of this nature; the case for this has already been well-tested through the critical and commercial success of filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami, Claire Denis,

PHOTOGRAPH 24 A recursive Dutch connection future markets.

Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa, Hong Sang-Soo, and Carlos Reygadas. It should be noted that the relative saturation of film submissions in Australian film festivals is high and that the entry costs into their programs are sometimes prohibitively expensive. Nonetheless, this is a strong secondary market to be considered once the film has gained support through foreign markets, which we’d

like to focus on through the networks generated by prospective Netherlands-based production companies in the official Dutch-Australian co-production model.

TIMELINE To capture the vitality of Kalbarri and the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, shooting should coincide with the beginning of the summer tourist season, ideally in September or November 2018, with one week of in-situ scouting, followed by a two-week shooting schedule, and another two or three week period in the following March.

The timing ensures that Hutt Lagoon is vibrant, and also lets the filming fall at the beginning of wildflower season. The post-production would then be completed by September 2019 for a release date that falls on the day of the former Zest Festivalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opening, with an outdoor screening to be held at the Red Bluff.

PHOTOGRAPH 25 The Spider Orchid is usually small, but it is quite distinct and easy to identity. It is found between Kalbarri and Mullewa in August and September, one of many unique wildflowers in the region.

IMPACTS: BENEFITS OF FILMMAKING IN REGIONAL W.A. Regional W.A. is one of the most diverse cinematic landscapes in the world, and to tell its stories without disembodying its visual language is a central concern of ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’. The importance of such artistic endeavours in the region has been highlighted by the $16 million dollar investment of the WA Regional Film Fund for Western Australia over the next four years, created expressly to attract new interstate and international producers and talent. Alongside recent high-return successes such as Jasper Jones (2017), Red Dog (2011) and Bran Nue Dae (2009), the pre-production initiative of ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’, the five-year annual Zest Festival, has also shown how impressively the arts can add value to regions and create new social and cultural capital that has intergenerational trade effects, particularly where regions are transitioning to new sectors and industries for their economic drivers. Zest

PHOTOGRAPH 26 ‘The Abrolhos are the jewel in the crown of the Mid-West coast, but have been largely untapped for tourism purposes.’ WA Premier Colin Barnett, August 14, 2016, Liberal Party State Conference

Festival engaged over 500 local community members as contributors and attracted more than 150 exceptional local, regional and international artists. The festival grew from 400 in 2012 to 3000 visitors in 2016 adding $985,000 tourism revenue to the local and Midwest economy. The success of the festival was built on a foundation of strong partnerships with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions at UWA and the Embassy for the Kingdom of the Netherlands and 10 other committed partners from international, state and local organisations. The attraction of these partnerships highlights the significance the Zuytdorp impact has from an Indigenous, Australian and international perspective. Revenue

from funding and sales of $575,500 was used to create an extraordinary cultural experience over five years that is still resonating within the community today. Each year over $200,000 was given as in-kind support from partners, local community groups, 50 local businesses and the Shire of Northampton.

PHOTOGRAPH 27 The Abrolhos Islands lie 60 kilometres west of Geraldton and consist of 122 islands clustered into three main groups: the Wallabi Group, Easter Group and Pelsaert Group, which extend from north to south across 100 kilometres of ocean.

Towards sustainable eco-tourism for the Abrolhos Islands When one takes these promising figures into account alongside Kalbarri’s accessibility and viability for production crews and its upswing of tourism indicators (such as the new construction of Kalbarri National Park’s Skywalk), Kalbarri is the most eligible cinematic landscape never to have found its way into the scenes of a high-impact feature film in Western Australia. Filming will take in the Coral Coast, inland areas such as Mullewa, the port city of Geraldton and, most significantly, the Houtman Abrolhos Islands, a group of more than

100 coral cays concealing the wreck of the ship Batavia, a Dutch VOC vessel which had been carrying gold, silver and 180 people when it went off course in the Abrolhos in 1629. ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’ aims to both document and strengthen the region’s transition from dependence on the local aquacultural industry to a service and experience-oriented economy based on sound principles of eco-tourism. This is in line with Tourism WA’s

perogatives to boost the viability for tourism in Northampton and the Coral Coast, and the WA Premier Colin Barnett’s announcement of a new plan to create a National Park for the Houtman Abrolhos Islands. 27

PRODUCTION TEAM Anthony Coxeter (Director); Rebecca Millar (Executive Producer); Adric Watson (Director of Photography); Tom Jennings (Director of Photography - Marine); DOP Assistant 1 & 2 TBA; Lighting Designer TBA; Lighting Assistants 1 & 2 TBA; Lachlan Ward (Lead Grip); Grip 1 & 2 TBA; Tess Darcy and Mei Saraswati (Sound Technicians and Designers); Roina Williams (protocol consultant #1); Shakara Walley (Protocol Consultant #2);

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[NB: in addition to this core staff, we are looking to employ production assistants from the Northampton Region wherever possible, particularly as up-skilling and workshop opportunities for younger people apropos of the style of Zest Festival. This is also artistically desirable and justified by the docu-fiction methodology, where the production process is intermingled with the filmic product.]

ANTHONY COXETER Director

Anthony Coxeter is a director, playwright, dramaturge and the Creative Director of Elective Aﬃnities.

While at RN, he produced his own feature for the Philosopher’s Zone on Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister.

After co-founding the nationally-distributed literary journal The Lifted Brow in 2007, An was a regular visitor to the newly constructed Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA, where he became profoundly inﬂuenced by the likes of Jacques Rivette, Pedro Costa, Apitchpong Weerasuthakul, Hong Sang-soo, Rosselini, Tarkovksy, Ozu and the ﬁlmmakers of the Iranian New Wave.

Anthony’s diverse interests have also seen him serve as a dramaturge for choreographic works across Australia, including as a consultant for the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).

In 2008, he joined the Melbourne Cinémathèque as Committee Member while undertaking an honours year at the University of Melbourne, and since 2011 has lectured and coordinated units in politics, history and literature at the University of Sydney, particularly in transnational literary sociology. While working as a scholar in Australia and Germany, Anthony has divided his time by working as a writer for the likes of Phillip Adams AO and Norman Swan on international aﬀairs for ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live.

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The political and cultural geographies of Western Australia became a key preoccupation from 2016, while working remotely for ABC North-West in the Pilbara, and visiting the left-hand point breaks of the Mid-North as an avid surfer. More recently, he serves as Director of the Greater Coombs Legacy Project (GCLP), a national cross-sec-

tor initiative that engages critically with the diverse legacies of H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs. Among the range of works under the GCLP is Phantom Dwellings, a series of architectural installations beginning in late 2018 collaborating with ﬁeld recordist Lawrence English and renowned architects Cazú Zegers and Josep Ferrando. Abri Vossos Olhos is his debut feature.

REBECCA MILLAR Executive Producer

Rebecca was the Artistic Director of the Zest Festival (2012-2016) in Kalbarri. She has 20 years’ experience working with regional communities, building partnerships to create sustainable change and building community capacity. Her career has been in natural resource management, biodiversity conservation, the non-government sector, heritage, culture and the arts. She is able to manage complex projects and deliver on large scale programs. She has creative vision and strong partnerships with cultural organisations and the community. Over the last five years Rebecca has brought to Kalbarri and the Mid-West region film making, sculpture, visual arts, dance and performance, puppetry, music, large scale projection, curated five exhibitions and opened up the creative opportunities for artists living in the Mid-West. Rebecca has written, directed and produced the last five multi-art form performances at the Zest Festival and built an audience of 2000 for the production.

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Rebecca has a creative relationship with the Nhanda community and worked with elders to tell story and create ceremony in landscape. Working with the ARC Centre for the History of Emotion she has also created an academic partnership which explores the power of the history of emotions in shaping our modern lives and how historical events send ripples into the future that we can all feel. This partnership won the 2017 Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) Australia Prize for Distinctive work in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

She enjoys a multidisciplinary approach and making big ideas happen. Her work as an Artistic Director has been experienced by over 15000 people in a regionally remote location in Western Australia.

THE CAST Maitland Schnaars As an actor and proud Noongar man, Maitland Schnaars is recognised as one of Western Australia's premier contemporary theatre artists, recently winning the 2016 Performing Arts W.A. Award for Best Male Actor. He has also been associated with a number of independent theatre companies such as Happy Daggers, Ellandar Productions, Upstart Theatre Company and Class Act Productions. After graduating from the Aboriginal Theatre course at WAAPA in 2003, Maitland undertook a BA in Contemporary Performance at Edith Cowan University where he met his two best friends and colleagues. The three of them went on to form the theatre company ‘Corazon de Vaca’, which performed shows in Perth leading up to a performance at the World Expo in Zaragoza, Spain, in 2008, and the production of his first play “If I Drown I Can Swim” in 2010. In 2013, Maitland formed his own company Ward 4F Productions and produced a re-working of his play “If I Drown I Can Swim” for the Perth International Fringe Festival, which was nominated for Best Theatre Production. In 2014 he performed in Yirri Yaakin’s multi-award winning play “King Hit” which was

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performed at the W.A. State Theatre. Thereafter, in 2017, he was also co-lead in Yirri Yaakin's production 'Conversations With The Dead' at Subiaco Arts Centre and performed in Black Swan State Theatre's production 'Let The Right One In'. In 2018, Maitland will play the lead role in a national tour of Tasmania Performs Production of 'The Season'.

Marlene Cummins As an actress, Cummins has appeared in Redfern Now, Supernova and The Matrix Reloaded. She is the focus of Rachel Perkins' documentary, Black Panther Woman, which premiered at the 2014 Sydney Film Festival, for her role in the Australian civil rights movement. From Kuku Yalanji country in the Cape York Peninsula, her mother was a Woppaburra woman from Great Keppel Island, and her father, Darcy Cummins, was a Guguyelandji musician, who travelled internationally and established links with Native American musicians. Considered one of Australia's most notable indigenous blues performers, she honed her skills at the Berklee College of Music, and has regularly performed with bandmates Murray Cook and Rex Goh. She showcases her vast knowledge of blues and roots music on Koori Radio, where she hosts Marloo's Blues, providing music and discussions from an indigenous perspective. This show won her the Broadcaster of the Year award at the 2009 Deadly Awards. Her first full-length album, Koori Woman Blues, is a mixture of original and traditional blues songs and includes guests Gil Askey, Fiona Boyes, Mark Atkins and Shannon Barnett.

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Adele Perovic Best known for her highly praised role as Hani Parande in the AACTA-award winning ABC drama, The Code, Adele is also known for her role in the Fox8 teen-drama SLiDE. Adele was also seen in the feature film Fell, with Dan Henshall, Matt Nable and Jacqueline McKenzie. She will next be seen in the psychological horror film Lost Gully Road, which is premiering at Monsterfest 2017. Adele most recently featured in shorts Moose, Kill Your Sons and Eye Contact. Her other short film credits include You Can Be Here and Joy of Sex by Daniel Whelan and Sam Dixon, and Dancing Goat by Sam Dixon. She also made a guest appearance on the ABC2 television series The Strange Calls and on stage, Adele starred in Eight for Exhibit: A Theatre. Adele graduated from the University of Southern Queensland with a Bachelor of Theatre Arts in 2010. Also occasionally working as a journalist, Adele graduated from the University of Technology Sydney in 2015 with a Master of Arts (Journalism).

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Adric Watson Award-winning Australian cinematographer Adric Watson began his career as a visual artist, when at age sixteen he was awarded the Ministers Award for Excellence in Art, with work hanging in Brisbaneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gallery of Modern Art. After an early change in direction he began a career in film, shooting and editing a number of independent shorts while studying a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film & TV (QUT), followed by a Graduate Diploma in Cinematography from Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premiere film school AFTRS (in which he received the High Achievement Award in Cinematography). Adric has worked professionally as a cinematographer in Australia, India, Europe, USA and Japan across mediums of music video, commercial, narrative and documentary films. He also pursues his own work in anthropological documentary, documenting the European migration crisis and a collaboration with World Press Photography winner Raphaella Rosella, observing the lives of young indigenous women in Moree, NSW. His work has received recognition on both the Australian and international stage, including the MTV awards, Camerimage Festival (Nomination Best Cinematography for Music Video), CMA awards, Melbourne International Film Festival and Flickerfest (Winner Best Cinematography in an Australian Short). PHOTOGRAPH 34

Tom Jennings A West Australian cinematographer known internationally for his work capturing surfing and the marine environment, Tom is routinely contracted for his cinematography by the industry's most influential companies such as Quiksilver, Volcom and Rip Curl, and has released edits featuring John John Florence, Kelly Slater, Clay Marzo and Jack Freestone, as well as WA stars Jack Robinson, Ry Craike, Jay Davies, and many others. Recent major film projects include Kai Neville's Cluster, and freesurfer Creed McTaggartt's web-series Real Axe. Driven by a creative mindset, Tom always pushes himself to deliver unique, striking visuals - results that grab the attention of both his clients and their audience. Passionate about immersing himself in the ocean, Tom finds inspiration in movement and natural light. At home in any ocean across the world, his skill set is fast becoming a go-to for those seeking to provide an in-depth look at the sea.

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POTENTIAL PARTNERS This is an Australian-Dutch co-production, the grounds for which were laid during Zest, when the Ambassador for The Embassy for the Kingdom of the Netherlands personally attended the festival and contributed ceremonially. Our prospective partnerships lie with the Kalbarri Development Association, ScreenWestâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s regional film fund, the Drage Indigenous Corporation, Tourism WA, as well as many others already established through the Festival. Zest Festival wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have been possible without funding from The Embassy for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Tourism WA, Lotterywest, Midwest Development Commission, Australia Council for the Arts, Country Arts WA, CANWA, State Government of WA, Shire of Northampton and the Kalbarri Development Association Inc. Substantial inkind resourcing from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

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KEY CONTACTS Anthony Coxeter | Director anthony.coxeter@sydney.edu.au 0413 711 621 Rebecca Millar | Executive Producer rebecca-millar@bigpond.com 0428 931 392 Adric Watson | Director of Photography contact@adricwatson.com 0427 177 730

s.c om tie ni aﬃ cti ve le w. e w w Cinema is a spice route ”Just as the history of the VOC’s transnational influence on the West Australian coast foregrounds the material conditions of cultural exchange, the case of the wreck of the Zuytdorp, and the contested story of its survivors, stands for the often invisible forces that have shaped migrations of seeing upon the Australian landscape, its indigenous inhabitants, and the self-conceptions of its settlers. 'Abri Vossos Olhos' extends this observation by becoming a contemporary act of the migration of seeing itself, and elaborates the premise of Zest Festival, its chrysalis, into the understanding of cinema as a spice route. And indeed, cinema is a spice route; we travel and trade in it by our glances.” Anthony Coxeter, Director of ‘Abri Vossos Olhos’