A French film festival is set to feature five Aboriginal films featuring five different language groups to showcase the sustainability and revitalisation of First Nations languages.
The first French film festival of its kind, the Films D’Auteur/Language Ancestrales festival - or Author Films/Ancestral Languages in English - will be held at the Musee Du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, an important European venue for Indigenous arts and culture, in Paris next week.
Co-curator of the festival and also the founder and artistic director of the Festival of Indigenous Australian Cinema which is also held in Paris, Greta Morton Elangué, said the festival was established to provide an international platform for Indigenous storytellers to share their culture and traditional first languages.
“[The festival is a great] way to get in there and show some amazing film work that has been made in language,” she said.
Ms Elangué said there is a "real lack of Indigenous content on-screen” and that it is film festivals like this one that can help further acknowledge Aboriginal culture at an international level.
“It’s an opportunity to ask questions and to stimulate discussion around that,” she said.
Sixteen films will be shown over four days, including five Australian films that have all been directed by Australian First Nations people, said Ms Elangué.
Each of the films are told in Indigenous languages and subtitled in French.
Warwick Thornton's 2009 film Samson and Delilah will screen at the the festival. Source: NITV News
Film director Curtis Taylor, a Martu man from the central part of Western Australia, said that it’s important to showcase Indigenous films on the international screen and that he was excited that an international audience would hear his traditional language.
“It gives us a voice and shows people that we are still here and people are still practicing language ... every opportunity we have we should put it on the screen and on audio,” he said.
“It’s a really good opportunity to showcase the diversity of Indigenous language on the continent and everywhere else.”
Mr Taylor’s 2018 short film Yulubidyi Until the End was filmed in his home town and is centred around a young man tasked with the challenge of protecting his younger disabled brother from the harsh realities people face in remote communities, such as poverty and limited access to health services.
“I wanted to shine a light on the people that have a disability and live in these remote and rural areas that don’t have access to what other people in cities have,” he said.
The short has also been nominated for Best Short Fiction Film at the 2019 AACTA Awards which take place in December.
