A Foot in Each World. A Heart in None.
The state of existence of living in one world while simultaneously belonging to another, is something that is a reality for millions of people around the world. This reality, however, isn’t always easy, especially when there is a transition from an ancient to a modern world, and trying to find harmony within the two. The phrase, ‘a foot in each world’ comes to mind, which is followed by ‘a heart in none’.
In a contemporary context, these ancient cultures, like the uniquely spiritual Indigenous Australian culture, present various obstacles for its youth of today and such are the issues that are explored in Spear, a new feature film by Stephen Page, artistic director of globally renowned dance theatre, Bangarra.
Along with executive producers Robert Connolly (The Turning, Balibo, The Julian Assange Story, Paper Planes) and Liz Kearney (Paper Planes), Spear tells the story of young man, Djali discovering what it means to be a man with ancient traditions in a modern world. It explores the notions of masculinity, the step into manhood (though the film has some strong female characters in it) within a contemporary indigenous context. Djali, played by Hunter Page-Lochard, finds himself in various realms of his own consciousness where he is exposed to the real and distressing issues that are currently affecting the male Indigenous community and his own personal circumstances. From the renowned rich ochre of the Australian outback, and the scorched remoteness of Arnhem Land in Australia’s Northern Territory, to urban Sydney, and even a bowling alley, Spear takes us through a winding journey reflecting the omnipresence of issues like alcoholism, violence, and substance abuse which are rife. But it is the strong tie to culture that ultimately shows Djali that it can support him throughout his life’s journey.
The film has little to no dialogue and this only strengthens the visual language of the piece. Perhaps it’s because when it comes to the social issues surrounding young Indigenous people, listening – really listening and watching would be more worthwhile and gainful than being a little too loquacious and besmirching what could be great understanding.
Spear is a reminder that we belong to a very complex world, and that the issues arising from this complexity are all around us, and very close to home. Stephen Page took some time out during rehearsals to talk to Managing Editor Audrey Bugeja about his first feature film, the importance of storytelling, his heritage and more.
fluoro. You’ve had such a positive career with the creation of some progressive and meaningful pieces, were your expectations high for the film?
Stephen Page. I was thinking about yesterday, I realise that I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity if it wasn’t for the character and the nature of the initiative where it came from, and it was from the Adelaide International Film Festival, and one of their initiatives was The Hive Project. I think it’s a biannual funding round where the performing arts companies connect with film producers. So I think that initiative sort of sparked and pushed me in the deliberate direction that I wanted to go in terms of the art form making of this film. Robert Connolly was the Executive Producer from Arena Media, and I worked with Robert Connolly on Tim Winton’s The Turning – I did one of the 10 minute shorts on that and I had no dialogue, I just had sort of exterior, outdoor, sort of sunset beach area with just bodies, boys with no shirts on and it was more about the masculinity, and I think he sort of liked that form of sparseness. There was something in the characters, in their spirits. What he said there was an initiative, and at The Hive Project, first time features, taking one of their theatre productions and somehow massaging it to the medium of film, it sort of got me – even in my old age now – oh that sounds inspiring, what work would translate? So from there on I think if he didn’t spark me with that form of initiative, and go with what I do best at Bangarra Dance Theatre, then I probably wouldn’t have had that opportunity.
f. It definitely is a fantastic opportunity, it’s not everyday that people in any industry get that chance.
SP. [laughs] I know I feel a bit spoilt but it was quite an ambitious thing to do, because it was something like an $800,000 budget, it’s was a three week shoot, five days a week, bit of a watch-clock on it, staying until 7, camera people walk off at 6. It was pretty gruelling in a wonderful way, the process of it, the shooting of it.
By the end of it, I was saying ‘what am I thinking?’ Anyone would think that I had this one hundred million dollar budget, and had all these creative ideas. And in a way I’m so glad I had the oily rag budget, but I’m so glad I just went with my creative team that I work in Bangarra and Bonny Elliot who was the Director of Photography on it, I just said to her: we’re getting married for the next three weeks, you’re going to pick me up every morning at six, and we’re going to fight in the afternoon because we’re going to disagree with something, but we’re going to have to make up that night at dinner. She just started laughing and was like ‘ok let’s go!’ At the end of the day it’s just about trying to get a really cohesive sense of everybody, or me trying to lead everybody, to agree with a creative decision on the day, and the dancers, the actors and the creative team were a really good mob, so I’m really lucky.
f. What do you feel was your main responsibility as the director of this film? You just briefly mentioned leading your cast and your crew in the right direction – what did you feel that your role was in its direction?
SP. I suppose, I tend to be, if I’m taking on a new initiative, I always forget that I have this wonderful heritage that has shaped me as an artist for my 30 years. It’s a pretty special heritage, you can’t have scientists saying it’s 40,000 years old, for the sake of saying it’s 40,000 years old. But I’ve been very fortunate to celebrate my storytelling throughout my identity and all these wonderful communities and just all of the black stories from traditional, to contemporary, to urban, to social, but I’ve just been so obsessed with it, and I’m just such a part of it, and I’m so glad I’ve been able to work in a profession that has given me that opportunity to work in the heritage that I work, so to have the opportunity to just reflect on that and say well, okay, I’ve already experienced all that, but how do I maintain that integrity and move it into the medium of film? I just have to keep telling myself: I work in theatre, I’ve done it for 25 years, I’ve always led from the front and just gone with my intuition, and I’ve just always thrived on positive energy. I’ve been working class, and I just had very little growing up and I’ve always just had lots of laughter, and great people around me, and just a really positive energy. I think we’re so spoilt in this country, and we have no idea what it’s like to travel with a family, crossing a border, and trying to find refuge somewhere, and I really just think as humans we need to identify this. That’s the whole push of the film: to look at the human spirit and about the challenges that we face, and trying to find a sense of optimism and hope at the end of it. I just kind of run the story along with the operation, really, and lead that way.
f. For me, watching the film, for the third or fourth time, optimism is really something that shone so brightly for me, and I almost want to ask you, are you giving you son that opportunity? I don’t know what he thinks half the time. He’s the main character in the film, do you feel that your connection as father and son made the portrayal that much stronger?
SP. He’s just coming back from Berlin at the moment he’s at the Berlin Film Festival. He’s such a world traveller for his age, 22. He’s travelling the world, he’s in an ABC series called Cleverman, he’s got the lead in that and that was just picked up at the Berlin Film Festival, it’s being showcased to get some interest around the world. The beautiful thing is that he’s grown up with Bangarra, and he’s played as a six and seven year old on stage…I think he’s just always been there. His mum is a great woman. She’s from New York, she’s from Haiti, and she knows the foot at each world. We’ve always laid down fairness to him and some really good strong direction. He’s got two really good leaders there with his mum and I, and we just always told him the world is his oyster, and go out there, as well as just a sense of respecting and listening, and just knowing who he is. I think he’s grown in that area and on the film, he was great, he knew I was under pressure, and he just…he had no dialogue hardly, and he had to observe these social chapters in the film, and we’d just have a little yarn, just one little whisper in each other’s ear and he’s just go off and observe. We’d only do no more than two takes, and no he was really good and I forgot about it and I really took it for granted, was sitting with the editor, and he just turned to me and he said: can you believe that’s your son? And I thought, no I just always forget. He is my son, and how great he is and his spirit is. Really proud of him.
f. You did kind of give him a hard job being in a feature film with such minimal dialogue. Why was dialogue used at such a minimum within the film? Why did you make that decision?
SP. Well I think it’s because of the meaning of dance that I come from. At a Bangarra show, you’ve got bodies, you’ve got costumes, you’ve got lighting, visual set design, and David Page’s wonderful score, and it’s always original music and it’s always drawing on the land and the people, and the native language mixed with contemporary sound sets and programming, and I think I’ve always just liked to measure all those mediums if I can in the best way on stage when I’m directing and hopefully they all sort of respect the one theatrical spirit, and then hopefully when an audience is watching a live show that somehow there…there’s virtual consciousness, or awakening, so I thought I wonder how I can take that without dialogue and rely on those and just squeeze it and massage it into the celluloid and see what’s going to happen. It was a deliberate choice to have minimal dialogue. I had to choose between my head going, ‘well look this is not going to be a commercial film’, and I said, ‘well no don’t think that’. The initiative is about taking that spirit of your performing arts, or your theatrical experience and then bringing it to film. I’m so glad I hung onto why I wanted to it because I probably won’t get to do another film again, and if I’ve done one I’ve done this one and it’s the closest to my artistry.
f. What were some of the main differences you found in directing a dance production to directing a film?
SP. I think it was for me that I really relied on the DOP and I’m glad she was a woman because women tend to want to discuss things more than men but, (me having six older sisters…you always had this response, and you’d had to talk about what you were feeling, so I learned that quite young) it was great to work with Bonnie, and I think just decision making and her technically giving me a sense of understanding of camera and framing. I just put my ego out the door and I wanted to be a three-year-old child learning a new craft. Once I did that it was good, I just understood it and the technique … it sort of helped with the decision making I suppose, from what I was working with and the body, the choreography can be close up…it just taught me a lot I suppose. So the difference would have been I suppose… I’ve worked on a couple of films, I’ve choreographed Sapphires with Wayne Blair, and I worked with those beautiful girls, and I’ve always admired them but I’ve always been behind them, but I’ve always been respectful of the people leading it. I’ve just always sat behind them just sort of watching, and putting my little three year old cap on, and in a way I sort of, even though I had to leave the operation of it all, I still felt like a little bit of a child, sort of learning the techniques of film. I’m probably scared about getting older, and I want to be this little young spirit.
f. What do you think you’ve taken away and learned from this experience?
SP. I guess for me, I feel so lucky I came from a culture where storytelling is so embedded into our heritage, like who we are as people. When I think of Indigenous visual art and visual story telling I think of Indigenous Kinship systems, and the connection to land and creature, and the totemic system, all the cultural customs and practices in our culture are such a huge part of our storytelling. For me it was just really nice and to know that a medium of film, diversity of our storytelling I suppose, and that technology and the medium of film is actually a great medium to work in to tell your story. That’s what I learned: to not be afraid to extend past my theatrical experience that I have on stage and push the boundaries.
f. You mention storytelling as being part of your heritage, and part of that storytelling is the element of sound that plays such an important part in the film, and in dance, and in culture, what was the brief that you gave to David for the film’s soundtrack?
SP. In a way I was lucky because Spear was created in 2000 we knew that it was a 38-40 minute work from that time. I did freak out a bit about if that was the actual production that was going to translate into film that I said to Rob Connolly what’s the minimum of the feature length, and he said almost 80 minutes, so I had to almost double the story and so I was lucky that I had the glossary of 30 years later, of 30 productions later I suppose, the glossary of David’s music that we already had this creative pantry, so he almost gave me the comfort of the heart of the film because the music existed. I think it was more about the way we curated the measures of music through the experience. It was almost like creating a music storyboard and temperament and energy and spirit. I’ve worked with him so much and he just trusted me. He just said you tell me what you’re feeling, and you go and get it. So it was really more about the sound design. Sound designer Andy Wright is a bit of a whizz, he did a lot of work on Mad Max as well, I believe. Good on David, he trusted him with the sound design because sound design is obviously the last patching of things that you do besides grading of a film. We were just out to find what natural elements work better, what natural sounds do we enhance without bastardising or disrupting the wonderful score. David is a bit like Hunter in a way, he’s just thought I was in my creative little lolly shop and I was trying a new medium and they were all laughing at me, going oh my God look at him, he’s just…so at the end of the film people were saying do you want to make another film and I was saying no because it was gruelling. But then once I got through post-editing I was just saying oh my God what a great medium to work in.
f. You shot the film in two main locations in Sydney and Arnhem Land?
SP. We were lucky to be in Arnhem Land October 2013 and I remember ringing Rob up and I said, I know we’ve got no money but how can we send Bonnie and a camera operator up to shoot in the country while we’re here and he said ‘you’re a bugger Stephen Page’… it’s Arnhem Land, I don’t think we’ve seen this in films, we always sea red dirt [it was a very different composition, a very different aspect] I was very lucky that the family is in Dhulunbuy in North East Arnhem Land, Djakapurra Munyarryun who plays the big guy, song man, he calls me his grandfather in his family, so he’s my grandson. He’s a big grandson. He said to me oh there’s a beautiful Brolga feeding ground where all the Brolgas hang out, and I was like really…and we just went to this terrain where no one knew of, and the poor dancers got dumped a kilometre away, and it was odd and strange and no one knew what they were really doing but how the land just welcomed us and we were able to work in that landscape.
f. The theatrical season kicks off on March 10th what do you hope viewers will take from Spear?
SP. I think I get paranoid thinking about how they first start to watch it because I noticed that when I was playing it in Toronto and stuff like that, I realised that you almost really need a dark space and you need to lift the sound a bit because there’s hardly any dialogue, and somehow you’ve got to surrender your energy right from the start and not treat it as a traditional film. Then I think you’re ok. If you’re ok to go through that I just hope that you somehow came to the sense of that optimistic spirit that …I just wanted to awaken people’s spiritual consciousness I suppose, and I all of our DNAs, we’re all measured with the different sort of dollop of spirituality – you’re born with either less or more, medium or whatever, and then somehow through life if you want to go and discover that sense of spirituality universally then go ahead, do it. So I just hope somehow it awakens the sense of the spirit that’s connected to our Indigenous storytelling.
f. What is this year looking like for you?
SP. We just had to do a Greater Western Sydney season out at Parramatta with a work created by one of our resident choreographers Frances Rings… called Terrain that is about the Arabuna Indigenous peoples’ point of view of Lake Eyre in South Australia. It’s a beautiful abstract piece, and we’re just finally doing a run-through today of putting that out there next week for about four shows. Then we’re working on a triple bill that I’m doing with an old lady from who is a beautiful visual artist from Arnhem Land and I’m actually selecting 3 or 4 of her artworks and having a dance response to that on stage. That’s actually going to be in Melbourne in September when we’re down there. And the Production is called Our, there are three stories: there’s a story on of my senior girls is creating based on one of the Macquarie Diaries about the massacre that happened in the mid-1800s in Sydney. It’s very bleak. But she’s bringing her perspective, and then the other work is two boys in my company who actually found out they were cousins when they came to the company, and it’s about them connecting back to their Kinship and their language, so there’s three works that are purely about the continuing of our stories, live on stage. It’s almost like seeing the film but I suppose a bit more three-dimensional when you see it on stage.
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Page’s film Spear shows us that hope is readily available. While we may struggle to come to term with our place in the world, and our place in our own communities, and while there are socio-cultural difficulties that have the potential to dictate the course of our lives, the opportunity for optimism, happiness and social cohesion are still somehow available.
Interview by Audrey Bugeja.
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