Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows scenes from the life of Tommy E Lewis as he prepares to set off on a journey to find his biological father’s grave. It includes shots of southern Arnhem Land, Lewis’s mother’s and his own domestic life, a ceremonial dance, and footage from the film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, in which Lewis starred as a young man. Lewis’s voice-over tells the story of his past and explains the purpose behind his journey. A photograph of his father is shown. The clip concludes with Lewis and his mother setting off on the journey in a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Educational value points

• The clip incorporates scenes from the film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), the central theme of which is identity and alienation, mirroring Lewis’s own background. Jimmie Blacksmith is portrayed as a 'mongrel bastard’, the child of an Indigenous Australian mother and an Anglo-Australian father, who belongs in neither camp. He feels alienated from his Aboriginal ancestry and is then rejected by the Anglo community to which he aspires to belong. A real-life incident gave author Thomas Keneally the material for the novel on which the film is based.

• The clip refers to the importance of the land in storytelling in Indigenous Australian cultures, and the intimate connection between storytelling and the land. Storytelling is both a traditional way of passing on information and a way of maintaining a culture. There are many categories of stories, including sacred stories, public stories, secret men’s and women’s stories, and stories of everyday life experiences. Particular regions have their own stories.

• The issue of mixed-race liaisons and the children born of these unions is central to the experience explored in this clip and has been of continuing concern throughout the history of Australian policy on Indigenous affairs. The Welfare Department believed it was in the children’s best interest to be brought up within Anglo-Australian society if they had one Anglo parent (usually a stockman, cook or overseer on an inland cattle station). This policy of assimilation resulted in the resettlement, sometimes forced, of such children to institutions or to foster homes. The 1997 'Bringing Them Home’ report documents the official policies conducted in all states and territories and the experiences of those who endured and survived these policies.

• The clip features the Indigenous actor Tommy E Lewis. Since being 'discovered’ by director Fred Schepisi and starring in his first film, Lewis (1957–) has pursued a career in the theatre, in films and as a musician. Lewis was born at Ngukurr (Roper River) in south-eastern Arnhem Land and went to school in Darwin. After he left high school, he was a bricklayer and a stockman before pursuing a career as an actor in Melbourne. He returned to southern Arnhem Land in 2001 and set up the Djilpin Arts Aboriginal Corporation, which hosts the Walking with the Spirits Festival each year. His documentary Yellow Fella was selected to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005.

• The Australian film director Fred Schepisi directed The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Born in Melbourne, Schepisi (1936–) briefly considered the priesthood, but left the seminary and pursued a career in television advertising. He moved into documentary filmmaking with some success before directing his first feature film, The Devil’s Playground (1976). His second feature film, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), was not a great commercial success but won him acclaim overseas. Pursuing a career in the USA, he has achieved further success with Iceman (1984), The Russia House (1989), Six Degrees of Separation (1993) and Last Orders (2001).

Scenes of a young Tommy Lewis in Fred Schepisi’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978).
Tommy E Lewis In 1977, I was approached at an airport by a stranger, a director named Fred Schepisi. He went on to cast me in the lead role in his film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. The life of the character I played was hauntingly close to my own – a young man of mixed heritage, struggling to find his place on the edge of two cultures.

Shots of southern Arnhem Land.
Tommy E Lewis My name is Tommy Lewis, and this is my people’s country in southern Arnhem Land. There are stories all through this country, passed down through time. This is a story about a journey, a journey across the land and into my past. My mother married my stepfather when I was six or seven, and he grew me up. His name was Katumara.

We see Lewis’s mother and footage of a ceremonial dance, followed by a photo of Tommy’s father.
Tommy E Lewis He was everything for me. My ceremonies, my dreaming. He loved me as his own son, before he passed away when I was 13. I heard stories about my real father round the campfire as I was growing up. I remember thinking he was like the phantom. He was a white stockman named Hurtle Lewis. He and my mother didn’t stay together.

Domestic scenes of Tommy and his mother, shopping for their journey, packing the car and driving off down the road.
Tommy E Lewis I often wondered why they didn’t marry and why I was the only child. My mother never talked about him. She’s always talked around the subject. She’s always filling my head up with wonderful dreams. I don’t really know when he died, and I don’t know where he was buried. This has always sat heavy in the back of my mind, and my spirit has always felt restless. This is a journey to put the pieces of my past together, and to find the resting place of my father. To finally say goodbye to him, and hopefully let my spirit rest.