Curious presents ‘Toomelah’ at Sydney Film Festival premiering tomorrow night
This weekend, Curious and Bunya Productions will host the Australian premiere of ‘Toomelah’, followed by a cast and industry party at the ArtHouse Hotel.
Toomelah is a film directed by Ivan Sen that depicts mission life amongst the young Gamilaroi people of Toomelah Community in northwest NSW.
Robbed of much of their traditional culture by Government policy, they are still largely disconnected from modern Australia. It is a community on a cultural edge, struggling for an identity.
“Toomelah Mission is where my mother and her family grew up. The community is at the core of my Aboriginality. For many years I have photographed and filmed the people and the area to express this connection,” says Sen.
The film is one of two films distributed by Curious that has made the Official Competition at Sydney Film Festival this year, alongside ‘Norwegian Wood’, which also premiered this week. Curious is the same production company behind ‘Blue’, a short film that recently won the Canal Plus Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.
Toomelah is told through the eyes of Daniel, a drug courier and trainee gangster for the local dealer Linden. When another dealer sets up in the community, a showdown ensues and Daniel is thrust into a world of violence.
During the 1980s, Toomelah gained national publicity for some of the worst living conditions in Australia. It is an Aboriginal community of around 300 Gamilaroi people on the border of Queensland. During heavy rain the mission becomes an island, cut off from the outside world like it was for so many years under government policy.
The Toomelah people still suffer from the many health and social issues that plague Australia’s Indigenous communities, and the future of young indigenous Australians is a central theme of the film.
Toomelah premieres at Sydney Film Festival at 6:30pm Saturday 18th June, and screens again at 10am on 19th June 2011. Tickets are selling fast, purchase tickets here.