Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Two Laws (1981)

play May contain names, images or voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
clip 'You gonna stay here with me?'

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

In re-enactment, Constable Stott menaces Dolly, who is tied up to a tree. An elder now directs the action of the re-enactment, and the group collectively decide the details of the events and how they unfolded.

Curator’s notes

The story of Dolly, how she was beaten and given salt instead of water, is what the community have chosen to tell. Dolly’s surviving siblings are involved in the reconstruction, making it the more profound in how the details are negotiated. Two Laws offers an incredible accomplishment in the re-telling of the story, the negotiations that make this possible, and the procuring of spatiality for something that would otherwise remain without physicality. In other words, Two Laws offers physical dimensions to a story that would have otherwise been relegated to the imagination alone.