Short film, 23m
Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in black) follows Yankunytjatjara man Derik Lynch on a road trip back to Country for spiritual healing, as memories from his childhood return. A journey from the oppression of white city life in Adelaide, back home to his remote Anangu Community of Aputula to perform on sacred Inma ground.
Inma is a traditional form of storytelling using the visual, verbal, and physical. It is how Anangu Tjukurpa (story connected to Country / dreaming / myth / lore / law) have been passed down for over 60,000+ years from generation to generation.
The film depicts the first time an initiated Yankunytjatjara man has performed a contemporary dance form on sacred Inma ground.
Awards
Silver Bear & Teddy Award / Berlinale 2023
Documentary Australia Award / Sydney FF 2023
Best Short Documentary / Melbourne IFF 2023
(nominee) Best Short Documentary / IDA Awards 2023
Silver Bear & Teddy Award / Berlinale 2023
Documentary Australia Award / Sydney FF 2023
Best Short Documentary / Melbourne IFF 2023
(nominee) Best Short Documentary / IDA Awards 2023
Full film available on request.
Feature film, 120m, 2028
One road in / one road outfollows five weddings in five coal mining communities: Breza (Bosnia and Herzegovina), the mining town of Armutçuk near Karadeniz Ereğli (Türkiye), Jharkhand (India), Newcastle (New South Wales, Australia) and the Rhondda Valley (Wales, UK).
Based on the Director’s family’s Welsh coal-mining ancestry, the work uses these weddings — ancient universal social rites of creation, possibility, and love — as a window through which to enter the transformation ongoing within these communities, as the reason for their existence disappears.
These are communties with a singular shared purpose for which they were built: coal. The fading resource engine of a century of human progress.
Communities and mines where there is, and always has been, only one way up, and one way down. One road in, and one road out.
ONE ROAD IN, ONE ROAD OUT / UNDER THE WEIGHT OF A CENTURY / ENGINE OF A CENTURY / COAL LAND OF MY FATHERS / TURNING OF THE CENTURY / ONE WAY UP, ONE WAY DOWN
Research, prepartory filming, and photography commenced in 2020. Film to be completed in 2028.
Research, prepartory filming, and photography commenced in 2020. Film to be completed in 2028.
Music Video, 4m
Music Video for The Howl & The Hum / The Only Boy Racer Left On The Island. Shot in the outer suburbs of my hometown Adelaide (Daveron Park, Elizabeth, Port Adelaide).
A story about fragile masculinity, petrol heads, and left behind people. It was inspired by my father’s childhood, and my own, and made with the real people from these communities (and my life).
Awards
Best Music Video / Australian Directors Guild Awards 2020
Best Music Video / AIM Independent Music Awards 2020
Best Music Video / Australian Directors Guild Awards 2020
Best Music Video / AIM Independent Music Awards 2020
Short essay film, 37m
Gaib is a short documentary essay film made in collaboration with Yoga Abdul Ghani and the local community of Batu Karas, West Java.
The work examines spirituality, death, and the presance of time in life, drawing on the rituals of every day experience in Batu Keras to explore what is unseen, and unnamed, yet carried within us and our communities.
From Arabic غَيْب (ḡayb, “that which is unseen, unperceived, unwitnessed, yet to be seen”)
Exhibitions
Tinning Street Presents 2019
Tinning Street Presents 2019
Music video, 5m
Music video for Sweet Tempest / Modern Justice, developed with and featuring the body building community of Sevlievo, Bulgaria.
Part of a trio of music videos made about life and youth in central and eastern Europe.
Short film, 23m
Extraction tells the story of Kuyani woman Donna Waters - Traditional Owner of the land on which the Olympic Dam is situated - as she narrates a ritual journey boundary-riding the changing Country surrounding the major mine sites at the centre of South Australia: Olympic Dam, Oak Dam and Carrapatina. Mines that occupy a vast area rich in Cultural history, and critical strategic mineral resources.
What once was open Country has become an exclusion zone stretching thousands of square kilometres, an expanse so vast that it crosses Kuyani, Kokatha, Barngarla, Andyamathanha, Arabana, and Yankunytjatjara Country.
The film boundary-rides this wound across Country, documenting how these mines are transforming the land and changing Storylines forever.
Awards
Samstag Gallery of Art & Adelaide Film Festival Commission 2022
Samstag Gallery of Art & Adelaide Film Festival Commission 2022
Exhibition
Samstag Gallery of Art 2024
Samstag Gallery of Art 2024
Commercial, 1m
Alien: Covenant / Audi is an in-world branded commercial made for the Alien: Covenant world building campaign, featuring Audi’s “lunar quattro” rover aboard the colony ship Covenant.
Framed like as a scene from the film, it follows the rover as it patroles the ship, investigating an unidentified presence.