A film about resilience.

A film collaboration with Audio Artist and Multi-Media Producer Dr Helene Thomas.

We made a film for the Hobart City Council’s current, Stories of Resilience project. There was a premiere screening event. The engagement with our subjects was profound and heart-felt, the following words come from my speech to the audience that night…

“Thank you to the team of people who made this important project happen and for having us on board. Thank you to everybody here for showing support for your community, essential storytelling and healing by engaging with this event tonight. Tasmania is our much loved home and community, you're our community so it's natural that we care deeply about the courageous people that feature in tonight's presentation and the well-being of you and your home. We wish for you to be physically and mentally well. We also wish for you to recover from the trauma of your experiences. Some of you said that the very act of telling your story helped your recovery, so we're really proud to be part of that.  We want your stories to be noticed, remembered and cared for. We hope the craft applied to your stories respected them and will help make them cared for as our community's recorded story and history. Kimbra and Volker both feature in our film.  A friend, and dog lover, almost cried when she saw their film in her Huonville office and was very professional to not openly cry but she did walk away for a moment so she may have openly cried. We love Kimbra and Volker's ease with themselves, their warmth and authenticity to hold space throughout the film. We have combined audio and still images for the second part of the presentation. We would like you to engage your mind to listen carefully and to create your own images before the photographic portraits are revealed. Our intention was to give the portraits a film look through the use of content, colour, lighting and lens choices. A visual slice and hopefully the visual essence of each story. We believe engagement comes through allowing the story to shine beyond the craft of telling it.  When we think back to the time spent making appointments, capturing content, editing, hours spent in the field carrying heavy equipment and dancing with the wind, rain and light, Helene and I both feel fulfilled by the results. So thank you for the effortless energy and inspiration from each other and everybody that contributed to this important project.”

I looked into the audience during the showing of our film. Two participants, who had only met that night, were comforting each other by holding hands. Participants of the project and others who were affected by the flood, met, swapped stories and bonded through their shared experience and the act of honestly sharing their humanity. Where does the healing come from? Is it from the simple act of telling the story or is it from from being heard? Maybe it was how it was allowed to be told or heard, acknowledged and woven into our community’s history?

There were also 12 portrait sittings and audio captures. I will show you these in a future post or you can see them here.

Kimbra and Volker are the stars of our film, their inspirational story, presence, relationship, love, courage, patience and of course resilience made it work.

My role with the film was as cinematographer, director, camera operator, gimbal operator, drone pilot, gaffer, location sound recordist, location scout and runner.

A big thank you to Dr Helene Thomas and the Hobart City Council for having me on board.

You can see our film here.