Island Home Country

A poetic cine-essay about race and Australia’s colonised history and how it impacts into the present.

Island Home Country is a one hour documentary about Australia’s colonised history and how it impacts into the present. The filmmaker, a descendant of convicts transported to Australia in 1788, goes on a journey to understand the disturbing history of colonial Tasmania, repressed during her own 1950s childhood there. Filming with family, newcomer Australians and First Australians she explores her personal responsibility as a ‘newcomer’ Australian to the First Australians and to ‘country.’

Island Home Country offers insights into how various individuals reckon with the traumatic legacies of British colonialism and its race based policies. It is a timely document in the historic moment of the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations. Island Home Country encourages all Australians to acknowledge the First Australians, to care for country and to work together in a process of de-colonisation.

Island Home Country recognises the protocols in Respecting Culture, Working with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community, and Aboriginal Artists, Arts Tasmania Aboriginal Advisory Committee, Hobart 2004.

ISLAND HOME COUNTRY SALES contact.

Jeni Thornley
Anandi Films
PO Box 320 Newport Beach NSW 2106 Australia