Film to explore blackbirding of Solomon Islanders

Transcript

A short film about the blackbirded Solomon Islanders will focus on the conditions the indentured labourers endured while in Australia.

The film, called Blackbird, is written and directed by Australian-Solomon Islander Amie Batalibasi.

Ms Batalibasi says approximately 60,000 Pacific Islanders were taken in the 19th century to work on sugarcane and cotton plantations in Queensland during the blackbirding era.

Ms Batalibasi spoke with Esther Zweifel about the film.

AMIE BATALIBASI: Blackbird is a short drama about two siblings from the Solomon Islands who were blackbirded from their homelands in the late 1800s and brought to Australia to work on a sugarcane farm in Queensland and so the film that I'm making really concentrates on their time spent in the cane fields under pretty harsh conditions. The film is called Blackbird in reference to the term blackbirding, which means the forced removal of the islanders from their homelands and I really just wanted to explore what that term could mean and what might have happened to someone who was blackbirded in that time period, that very dark part of our history.

ESTHER ZWEIFEL: I understand that it's about these two siblings Kiko and Rosa, are these fictional characters or are these based on real people?

AB: Yeah, the main characters in this film are imagined but they're kind of based on my own personal history in terms of having ancestors who were taken from their homeland in the Solomons and were never seen again. So basically, I found these characters Kiko and Rosa through my research and reading documents and newspaper articles but also hearing oral histories within the Australian South Sea Islander community. It's definitely not a documentary, it's a dramatisation of this history but it is imbedded in a lot of research and a lot of conversations with community.

EZ: Is your personal connection to this issue what motivated you to produce the film?

AB: Yeah of course I wanted to make this film for personal reasons to kind of delve into my own ancestral history. But also I've been working a lot as a filmmaker with the Australian South Sea Islander community in Queensland, who some of which are also my family. So there are many reasons why I wanted to make this film and most people I talked to don't know about this history so it's really important for me to use film as a way to share this history and to, I guess, create discussion about it. It's so surprising the amount of people who have no idea that this went on in our country. There's been a long struggle for recognition for Australian South Sea Islander people. There have been some wonderful leaders heading that movement and people are still working today for recognition.

Filming is due to start in Mackay, Australia, on July 21 and is expected to take eight days.