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Documentary Award
Subcategory of Sydney Film Festival Awards
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Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2019

winner form y separately published work icon She Who Must Be Loved Erica Glynn , ( dir. Erica Glynn ) Australia : Since1788 , 2018 15558528 2018 single work film/TV autobiography

'Freda Glynn was never a big talker but these days she talks even less. When her documentary filmmaker daughter Erica Glynn tells her she wants to make a film about her, Freda responds simply with a shrug. And yet Freda has so much to relate. She could, for instance, talk about how she ran CAAMA, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, an organisation that has been dedicated to Aboriginal music and culture since the early 1980s. Or perhaps how she trained Indigenous filmmakers at Imparja Television, casually managing to raise five children on her own at the same time. But instead, Freda uses her daughter’s project to research part of her family history. There is uncertainty about whether Freda’s grandmother was killed during a massacre of Indigenous Australians; Freda’s own mother was never able to clarify events during her lifetime. Together, Freda and Erica Glynn embark on a complex search for answers. Freda, we learn, is a determined woman whose strength, humour and creativity are expressed in all her dealings with the people she cares about. She is also a woman whose work has had a lasting impact on the Aboriginal community’s struggle for emancipation.'

Source: Berlinale 2019.

Year: 1976

winner form y separately published work icon Tjintu-Pakani : Sunrise Awakening ( dir. Andre Reese ) Sydney : Kiwi Film Co , 1975 Z1723500 1975 single work film/TV The 1970s were a time of radical social change - nowhere more so than in the newly politicised indigenous communities of Sydney. Creating a dance company to express themselves as thinking, feeling, sexual human beings, this was art as politics at its most raw. This fascinating program charts the growth and awakened awareness of a group of Aborigines as they discover themselves at the Black Theatre Arts and Culture Centre in Redfern. Winner of the documentary prize at the Sydney Film Festival of 1976, this is both an important historical document and an entertaining, informative overview of the importance of dance in the creation and regeneration of Aboriginal cultural identity.' Source: Back cover.
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