Melanie Hogan
NationalityAustralian
OccupationDocumentary film-maker
Years activeSince 2004
Known forDocumentaries about life in remote Aboriginal communities
Notable work"Kanyini"

Melanie Hogan (born on 8 July, 1977) is a film director and producer of Australian documentaries. Her directorial debut Kanyini premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in 2006. Her film narrates the Australian history from her opinion of a Aboriginal perspective, as she acknowledged that she had not been educated on it despite having attended Australian schools through the tertiary level.

Overview

Since 2004, Hogan has made documentaries in remote Aboriginal communities, exposing the challenges they face.

Her first documentary, Kanyini (2006), was distributed in Australia by Hopscotch Films. It won the 2006 Discovery Channel Inside Film Best Documentary Award, the Independent Spirit Inside Film Award, and the Best Documentary Award at the London Australian Film Festival (2007).

Hogan’s other documentary films, Yajilarra (2008) and Tristan (2011), both premiered at the United Nations in New York and Government House with Australia's Governor General, Quentin Bryce, as host. Yajilarra received a standing ovation at the UN.

Between 2009 and 2012, Hogan wrote, edited, directed, and produced an online project for the Australian Federal Government called the Stolen Generations Testimonies.[1] The site tells the stories of Aborigines who were taken from their families and known as the Stolen Generations.

Films and documentaries

Kanyini

Kanyini is her attempt to connect fellow Australians with the story of Australia’s past and present from an Anangu perspective in the hope Australia can move forward in proper friendship with Australia’s Indigenous peoples. The film’s title is ‘Kanyini: 40,000 years of culture, one philosophy that connects us all.’

Kanyini tells the story of one Aboriginal man from Pitjantjatjara country called Bob Randall and the separation he experienced from his country, his family, his traditional lore and his spirituality since he was a young child,[2] as a result of Europeans imposing their superior sense of self and their will on the Indigenous people of Australia. It is therefore also a story of Indigenous wisdom clashing against materialist notions of progress. Despite the fact his people are struggling in a modern world, Bob hopes non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians can walk together going forward, even though they have not done so in the past. As Bob explains, "The Earth is our Mother. That makes you and me brother and sister."

Kanyini is a story that is fundamental for understanding contemporary Australia, for only by knowing our past and our present can we dream of a future that includes everyone. Kanyini won the Independent Spirit Award as well as the National Geographic Best Documentary Award at the Australian Inside Film Awards the year the film was released.

After Kanyini was released, Hogan went on to develop an education program called Yarnup around Australia, which attempted to connect Australian high school students with their local Indigenous elders.

Yajilarra

Still committed to connecting with Indigenous Australians, Hogan then directed her next documentary in the Kimberley in 2008 on the subject of the women of Fitzroy Crossing and their campaign against alcohol abuse in their community.[3] The film’s title was devised by the local women themselves: ‘Yajilarra’ which means ‘to dream’ in the Bunuba language.

The project came about because the federal sex discrimination officer at the time, Elizabeth Broderick, had heard about what the local women had done to reduce the devastating effects of excessive alcohol consumption in their Fitzroy Valley communities and she wanted their heroic story to be told to the world. She contacted Hogan to direct the film.

The women of the community, led by June Oscar AO and Emily Carter, jointly led a campaign to place a ban on the sale of full strength alcohol in their community. The ban, which was not without controversy, resulted in a 43% reduction in domestic violence reports, a 55% reduction in alcohol related hospital presentations, an increase in school attendance levels and an 88% reduction in the amount of alcohol purchased. The film premiered at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York in 2009 where it received a standing ovation.

Tristan

In 2011, the women of a community requested that filmmaker Hogan create a new documentary focusing on children affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), a condition caused by excessive alcohol consumption during pregnancy. The objective of this film was to raise awareness about the risks of prenatal alcohol exposure and to inform the global audience about the necessary support for children with FASD to lead fulfilling lives despite their disabilities. Titled 'Tristan', the film depicts the challenges faced by a 12-year-old boy living with FASD and underscores the efforts of the Fitzroy Valley community in addressing this condition.[4] The documentary made its debut at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in 2012.

Magic

In 2019, Hogan appeared in Magic as herself;[5] the film was directed by Mark Matthews and Billy Ray Valentine.

Stolen Generations Testimonies

Hogan launched another project in 2011: an Online Museum devoted to capturing the testimonies of Australia's Stolen Generations. The museum was launched at Parliament House to commemorate the 4th anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations. Hogan had been capturing testimonies since 2009 inspired by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. By 2012, 46 testimonies had been collected from around Australia.

By allowing Australians to listen to the Survivors’ stories with open hearts and without judgement, it is hoped, more people will be engaged in the healing process. The project has been created with the aim of producing a national treasure and a sacred keeping place for Stolen Generations’ Survivors testimonies.

Debra Hocking, a survivor of the Stolen Generations, stated, “For those people who do feel challenged by the Stolen Generations’ we ask you to listen to just one of the testimonies to see if you still feel the same. That’s all we ask.”

From the inception of the colonial era, Indigenous children in Australia were systematically removed from their families. In frontier areas, numerous instances were recorded where settlers abducted these children, often forcing them into servitude. Additionally, in various missions and reserves nationwide, Indigenous children were routinely separated from their parents, residing in dormitories with minimal parental interaction. This segregation was partly aimed at facilitating their conversion to Christianity, distancing them from their native cultural influences.

Towards the end of the 19th century, this practice of removing Aboriginal children escalated notably. This period saw a rise in the number of children of mixed Indigenous and non-Indigenous heritage. Colonial authorities, driven by a belief that these children could be assimilated into the white population through education and training, intensified their efforts. This approach was seen as a solution to what was referred to as the 'half-caste' problem, a term indicative of the racial ideologies of the time.

Historian Professor Anna Haebich noted, “Imagine this scenario of police patrolling and observing things and noting down who was where and looking out for half caste children and then they might do an early morning raid so there everybody is sleeping, they might be just starting to wake up and police come thundering in on their horses. Aboriginal families had developed over time little ways of trying to stop the children from being taken away. They had look-outs and warning systems and kids might rush off into the bush. Some families put them in suitcases, sat on the suitcase, they might have, if they knew about it might have the children blackened up with charcoal.”

Aboriginal children across the country were taken from their families and placed in institutions and foster homes, often not knowing their parents were alive or searching for them. They were taught to reject their Aboriginality, and often experienced abuse and deprivation.

In 1997 the Commonwealth Government undertook an inquiry into the Stolen Generations as these children had come to be known. Hundreds of Survivors gave evidence of their experiences and a report of the extent of these practices was made public.

Anthropologist Professor Marcia Langton stated, “If we were to compare the impact of these so called assimilation policies in their consequences to doing something similar to the Australian population today. Let’s say we’d leave one third of Australians living in their family homes, living their lifestyles. Another third we’d take out of their homes and we’d put them in the illegal immigrant detention centres and then the other third, take them away from their families, their children and we’d enslave them and we’d make them work on cattle stations and on mines or leave them with strange families to cook and clean.” Many of the Stolen Generations are still finding their way home, still searching for the families they lost and putting together the pieces of their lives.

Publications

Nyuntu Ninti by Bob Randall and Melanie Hogan, 2011 (ISBN 9780733328503).[6] This children’s book was inspired by the Kanyini documentary.[7]

Awards

Film YearCategoryResult
Kanyini 2009National Geographic Best Documentary Film AwardWon[8]
Kanyini 2009Glenfiddich Independent Spirit AwardWon[8]

References

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