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Clip description
The animated short It’s Like That can be viewed here in full. Three baby-bird puppets representing actual children held in captivity talk about their experiences and their fears.
Curator’s notes
The opening darkness and haunting music are a prelude to the simple line drawings used to great effect throughout the film to convey drama and fear: as a ship catches fire and capsizes and as the fence posts of the detention centre grow and multiply and are finally capped with barbed wire.
These largely monochromatic 2D images contrast with the coloured, tactile 3D puppets representing the children kept in detention. The sad expressions on the faces of the baby birds conflict with what the children imagine life is like in the world ‘outside’ where ‘people talk and they laughing’.
The film brings home the fact that this is not some faraway land that is keeping these children imprisoned like criminals, but that it is happening in Australia.
