Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This clip shows Indigenous Australian teenager Lena (Dannielle Hall) sitting in a bus shelter in an isolated outback setting. Her younger brother Liam (Mundurra Weldon) and his friend ride up and ask for some money. A police car passes and Lena asks what Liam has been up to. Lena’s friend Ty (Jenna Lee Connors) joins her and confides that she thinks she is pregnant. Later, as Lena walks home, she passes a young mother wheeling a pram. When she gets to her house, Lena sees the police car parked outside.

Educational value points

• The Indigenous Australian characters portrayed in Beneath Clouds are not stereotypes, but are presented as complex characters, experiencing many issues faced by Aboriginal teenagers to do with place and belonging. Lena’s acute awareness of the limitations of her life and her dream of something more, however, are universally familiar and are summed up in her observation 'You’re never gonna get out of this shithole, Ty’.

• The clip explores problems faced by Indigenous Australian teenagers growing up in isolated communities. Statistically, Indigenous Australians are the most disadvantaged group in Australia, experiencing the highest rates of unemployment, imprisonment, poor health and infant mortality.

• Beneath Clouds explores assumptions about ethnicity based on skin colour. Lena’s Aboriginal identity is not immediately obvious, either to the audience or to the darker-skinned Indigenous Australian character Vaughn, because she has fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. Assumptions of non-Aboriginal affiliation based on physical characteristics can disentitle Indigenous Australian heritage, which in this case is based on Lena’s Aboriginal mother and antecedents.

• Silence, music and ambient sounds are important elements supporting the drama. As Ty and Lena sit in the bus shelter, their sparse conversation is interrupted by the roar of a passing truck. Music then builds as Ty declares that she thinks she is pregnant. The sound of thunder in the distance is incorporated with music and the sound of the wind to accompany images of the empty landscape and the aimless figures that inhabit it. The soundscape is subtly layered and is an integral part of the story-telling.

• The thoughts and feelings of the characters in Beneath Clouds are rarely revealed directly through dialogue and most of the significant communication between characters occurs with a look or a glance. In the clip, when Lena arrives home to see the police car parked outside, her face, lashed by the rain, eloquently reveals her sense of unease. The timing of the action, the close-ups, the soundtrack and the changing landscape also contribute to the power of the non-verbal communication.

• The sequence in which Lena passes another young Aboriginal girl pushing a pram provides an example of how landscape can be used as a visual metaphor. Framed in wide shot, the two figures are dwarfed by the windy, bleak landscape that surrounds them. Director Ivan Sen’s sensitivity to the landscape, using its nuances to reflect the circumstances and emotions of the characters, also reveals a creative sensibility that has perhaps been shaped by his own Indigenous Australian identity. Sen won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Direction (2002) for Beneath Clouds, which is his first feature film.

• First-time actor Dannielle Hall won the Berlin Film Festival’s Piper Heidsieck New Talent Award for Best Young Actress in 2002 for her portrayal of Lena.

This clip starts approximately 4 minutes into the feature.

Lena is sitting at a bus stop. Her brother, Liam, and his friend come along on their bikes smoking cigarettes.
Lena Where were you today?
Liam In class.
Lena I didn’t see ya.
Liam Got any money?
Lena What for?
Liam To get a feed.
Lena Where’s your money?
Liam Got none.
Lena Where did you get them smokes from?
They all look up as they see a police car approaching. It drives past them. Lena looks accusingly at Liam.
Lena What ya been doing, Liam?
Liam Nothing.
Lena Doesn’t look like nothing.

The two boys cycle off. Lena’s friend, Ty, walks across the road to Lena and sits at the bus stop with her. They share a bag of hot chips Ty has brought over.
Lena I thought ya was getting chicken salt?
Ty I said ‘chicken salt’.
A truck drives past. They both stare at the vehicle driving away from them.
Ty Hey, Lena.
Lena What?
Ty I think I’m pregnant.
Lena sits quietly for a moment. She looks at the boys hanging out across the road.
Lena You’re never gonna get out of this shithole, Ty. You know that, don’t ya?
Boy across the road Ty!
The boy across the road gestures to Ty to come over.
Ty See ya later then, eh?

Lena walks home and passes a young girl pushing a pram. It starts raining. When she approaches the house, she sees the police car parked outside.