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Shifting Sands – My Colour, Your Kind (1998)

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Rugged cross education content clip 2

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

The clip opens with billowing curtains, a statuette of Christ and the close-up of a young albino girl (Melissa Middleton). In flashback the young albino girl closes her eyes as her mother (Christine Palmer) smears her with mud. A cross crashes through a pane of glass, and the young girl is running towards a security fence.

Curator’s notes

It was a resistance tactic by Indigenous parents to smear any fair-skinned children with mud or charcoal with the intention of fooling the authorities – usually the police – who were employed to remove children from their families and place them in welfare. The writer/director Danielle MacLean references this strategy but makes it an extreme circumstance by introducing an Indigenous girl who is born albino, a condition where an individual is born without any skin pigmentation.

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australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

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