EFFA Presents:

Sovereign Cinema

A one-day cinema event celebrating Indigenous perspectives on climate, ecology, culture and custodianship.

EFFA presents: Sovereign Cinema

Saturday 10 December
ACMI, Fed Square, Naarm (Melbourne)

A one-day cinema event celebrating Indigenous perspectives on climate, ecology, culture and custodianship.

All day pass: $39, Concession: $30, ACMI members: $27

Single tickets: $18, Concession: $14, ACMI members: $12

5% of all ticket income goes to Pay The Rent.

Check out the digital flyer

What’s happening.

You’re invited to EFFA presents: Sovereign Cinema, our first in person screening since 2019. With a combination of unique stories, including documentary, animation and experimental, this is cinema that reveals the resilience of Indigenous people and the importance of protecting ancestral connections to Country.

Environmental Film Festival Australia (EFFA) presents a one day mini-festival, showcasing Indigenous voices and sovereignty through film. Audiences are invited to experience the world through the eyes of its First Nations Peoples and engage in meaningful conversations about people, place and environmental practices.

These scatterings of stories - some of legends and customary traditions, others perspectives of survival and celebrations of culture - all touch on the deeper need for the protection of land, sea and waters.

Join us for sharing, yarning and cinema responding to climate change and culture, recognising ancestral knowledge and that First Nations stories are intrinsically connected to the environment and to Country.

Presented by | Environmental Film Festival Australia, ACMI, Schwartz Media (The Saturday Paper & 7am) and the High Commission of Canada, with support from Carbon Positive Australia.

Watch the trailer.

Session one | Sovereign Shorts #1

Sovereign Shorts #1 reflects on myth, storytelling, and the interconnection between ancestral knowledge and the present day.

This powerful collection thoughtfully portrays stories from First Nations communities across the world: Sámi female-centric mythology and traditions are explored through the ethereal and empowering Háldi; the lyrical Kii Nche Ndutsa shares the poetic considerations of an Indigenous Mesoamerican, pondering family, history and their connection through corn; the moving documentary Pili Ka Mo'o platforms Kanaka Maoli protection and the fight to save a sacred Hawaiian burial site, against a backdrop of judicial proceedings and Hollywood invasion; the history and ecology of Turtle Island is enhanced through dreamy animations in The Fourfold and Premonition: On the Eve of Signing Treaty 6; and Australian water guardianship is explored through two powerful Aboriginal films, the poetic and graceful Veins of the Country (featuring Elder Gooniyandi artist Mervyn Street) and the impactful Warbundar Bununu: Water Shield (following a young leader demanding change when Government and bureaucracy lets his community down).

Sovereign Shorts #1 showcases the voices of First Nations Peoples from across Canada, Sápmi, Mexico, the United States and Australia, through animation, documentary and storytelling. This screening will include opening speeches and ceremony.

Session two | Sovereign Shorts #2

Sovereign Shorts #2 centres on cultural connection and Indigenous identity, interrogating impacts of modernity and progress, through snapshots of real lived experience.

This striking package artfully depicts the lives and practices of international First Nations communities, in a manner both urgent and timeless: Swimming Yesterday explores custodianship and community displacement in Brewarrina, NSW, home to the the world’s oldest man-made structure, the Ngunnhu fish traps; the trailblazing L’Innu du futur shares the deeply personal reality of being Indigenous in an ever-increasing urbanised era; Sámi traditions and their delicate yet complex relationship with reindeer are powerfully presented in the breathtaking EALÁT; In The Shadow of Tugtupite poetically explores ideas of identity through landscape and its preservation; and both TAIAO and Wind Song and Rain offer emotive musings on art, whenua (land) and sense of self, through a stunning Māori lens.

Sovereign Shorts #2 showcases the voices of First Nations Peoples across Greenland, Canada, Sápmi, Aotearoa and Australia, through screen art, documentary and storytelling.

Session three | DƏNE YI’INJETL | The Scattering of Man (2021)

This breathtaking directorial debut by Tsay Keh Dene First Nation member Luke Gleeson tells the story of Gleeson’s community and their role as unwilling participants in a wave of developments that led to the creation of the largest hydroelectric project in the history of British Columbia.

Built on the Peace River, in a stunning valley in the Rocky Mountain Trench, the W.A.C. Bennett Dam drastically transformed the territory inhabited for millennia by the Tsay Keh Dene First Nation. The dam took seven years to complete and resulted in the flooding of a large area to create a massive reservoir, with the Tsay Keh Dene people displaced from their land amidst the rising waters.

The events that followed the dam’s construction are recounted in visual prose and through the traditions of Dene storytelling. With a steady, experimental rhythm, emerging Dene filmmaker Gleeson shines an impactful light on the flooding of his people’s lands, pairing archival news clips and interview footage with sweeping shots of a land(scape) now completely transformed.

DƏNE YI'INJETL - The Scattering of Man serves as a wider critique of provincial Crown corporations, and the marriage of industrial and government mega projects that have violently disrupted the lives and lands of Indigenous people - all without rightful consultation or any real regard for the lands themselves.

All the films.

DƏNE YI’INJETL | The Scattering of Man

2021 | Canada | Australian premiere
This breathtaking directorial debut by Tsay Keh Dene First Nation member Luke Gleeson tells the story of Gleeson’s community and their role as unwilling participants in a wave of developments that led to the creation of the largest hydroelectric project in the history of British Columbia.
EALÁT

2021 | Sámpi, Norway | Australian premiere
“As long as the reindeer exist here, so do we.” Through Elle Márjá Eira’s eyes we follow her family in different seasons with their reindeer herd. A stunning and unforgettable documentary about living and surviving in Sámi reindeer husbandry in our strange times.
Háldi

2021 | Sámpi, Norway | Australian premiere
Set between Sápmi and the underground world of Saivo, the unity and power of Sámi female relations is replenished by the animistic spirit, Háldi. This ethereal short is a collaboration between filmmaker Ann Holmgren and composer Mette Henriette, created in the boundaries of film and music, of screen and art.
In the Shadow of the Tugtupite

2020 | Greenland | Victorian premiere
A cinematic portrait of despair and anxiety towards an unknown future for the Inuit of the world's largest island. This graceful short questions the rationale behind past and future mining prospects in Greenland and how they are connected to a search for identity for a fledgling nation.
Kii Nche Ndutsa

2021 | Canada | Australian premiere
An immersive story, both personal and poetic, artfully sharing a filmmaker’s ode to the land and his double identity as an urban Indigenous person. Frenetic, beautiful and unforgettable.
L’Innu du futur

2021 | Canada | Australian premiere
An immersive story, both personal and poetic, artfully sharing a filmmaker’s ode to the land and his double identity as an urban Indigenous person. Frenetic, beautiful and unforgettable.
Pili Ka Mo'o

2021 | United States | Australian premiere
"The Fukumitsu ‘Ohana (family) of Hakipu’u are Native Hawaiian taro farmers and keepers of their generational practice. While much of O’ahu has become urbanised, Hakipu’u remains a kīpuka (oasis) of traditional knowledge where great chiefs once resided and their bones still remain. When their familial burial grounds are destroyed to make way for ‘progress’, they must navigate the bureaucratic world of real estate and judicial proceedings to fight for their heritage and home.
Premonition: On the Eve of Signing Treaty 6

2021 | Canada | Australian premiere
On the eve of the signing of Treaty 6 in the 1870s North West America, a Cree Elder has a premonition about the future. Hear his vision, in both Cree and English, while images of a changing landscape dance and morph past their original form. The storm post-treaty is coming, yet there is hope and resilience just beyond, in this powerful animation.
Swimming Yesterday

2020 | Australia
Brewarrina, NSW is home to the oldest man-made structure in the world: the near half-kilometre complex of fish traps known as ‘Ngunnhu’. These ancient traps are still visible in the Darling River and have strong social, cultural and spiritual associations for many. This soulful film explores the importance of Ngunnhu and the heartbreaking displacement of a community due to the river’s dwindling water levels.
TAIAO

2021 | Aotearoa | Australian premiere
Whatungarongaro te tangata, toitū te whenua | As people disappear from sight, the land remains.
TAIAO is a non-verbal documentary experience comparing the wonder of nature and the advent of man. This extraordinary cineart communicates the consequences of our industries and a reckoning with colonisation, while acknowledging the unsustainable present and allowing us a glimpse of a more sustainable, equitable future.
The Fourfold

2020 | Canada | Victorian premiere
Based on the ancient animistic beliefs and shamanic rituals in Mongolia and Siberia, this stunning stop-motion animation explores Indigenous worldviews and wisdom, sharing the sacred beliefs of nomadic Mongolic peoples.
Veins of the Country

2020 | Gooniyandi (and Bunuba, Walmajarri, Nyikina, Warrwa)
"We’re all part of that river, we drink one water from the one main rainfall. Everybody." Elder Gooniyandi artist Mervyn Street shares his art and stories, exploring the waters of the Warlibiddi / Margaret and Martuwarra / Fitzroy Rivers catchment and their vital significance to the country and people’s lives.
Warburdar Bununu: Water Shield

2019 | Australia
Scott McDinny, a young Garrwa song man, is devastated when the NT Borroloola town camps are bombarded with water contamination notices. Determined to shield his Gulf Country homelands from mining and the resulting poisoned water, Scott sets out to find answers knowing that his Elders will never leave their ancestral homelands. This documentary follows the trail of the heavy metal pollution, which has made the community’s water unfit to drink, fish or swim in.
Wind Song and Rain

2021 | Aotearoa | Australian premiere
Yes, he is here in spirit. But, he isn’t just in one place. His spirit is with me.“ A national treasure whose poetry spanned over 40 years, the world knew Hone Tuwhare but his mokopuna Manaia never did. Now 18 years old, Manaia feels her koro calling her, triggering an emotional journey of connection in te reo Māori to prove there’s another Tuwhare with the power of poetry.