Audience responses to WINHANGANHA

Sharing stories

WINHANGANHA was one of the first NFSA projects I was introduced to when I stepped into the position of Senior Manager of the First Nations Engagement team (previously Indigenous Connections) in 2022. The Curatorial team had been working with Jazz Money and almost a year into this exciting film project, I chatted with Jazz about the development and continuing production process. We spoke about what archives are, especially to First Nations communities, the lenses through which stories are shared, and how this impacts people, communities and broader audiences. Watch our conversation:

Providing connection

Since the film's completion, I have been fortunate to have attended some very special screenings of WINHANGANHA, both internationally and within Australia. I personally love watching films with an audience. The immediate nature of the response that you can feel as the shifts of emotions filter through the space, from vocal gasps to tears at confronting material seen in Chapter 2 that represents the hard history and stories told about us, through to laughter and joy as the film moves into a shift of perspective in Chapters 4 and 5 and the records present a time of change and empowerment to our stories being more frequently told now by us.

Reactions internationally at the Global Audiovisual Archiving conference in Toronto, Canada, in July 2024 and the Harvard University Ancestral Futures Symposium in Cambridge, USA, in October 2024, were of deep gratitude. The Ancestral Futures screening was largely a First Nations audience with a sense of universal solidarity and acknowledgement of similar experiences in their communities of colonisation, the need for truth-telling and empowerment in having stories shared through a First Nations lens.

In Australia, the screening at the GARMA Festival in an open-air cinema at the Gulkula ceremonial site in remote North-East Arnhem Land provided a sense of connection with land and sky to the film, the sounds of Country and community filtered through the air adding to the experience. Jazz provided insights into her process to the audience, and again, this screening proved emotional, with great discussions across the days of the festival. It's wonderful to see and speak with audiences and discover their gratitude and a universal response of collective sadness for the past and hope and joy for the future, matching Jazz Money's response to the stories she found in the archive.

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