May 28th, 2025Film fest to celebrate national Reconciliation Week
The Central Victorian Indigenous Film Festival has returned to celebrate National Reconciliation Week.
The festival got under way yesterday, Tuesday May 27 and runs through to Tuesday, Jun 3 2025.
It offers a great chance to experience a range of films, videos, activities and discussions in local venues and online.
This year’s festival showcases an exciting range of First Nations films, documentaries and videos starring and telling stories about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People from Central Victoria and across Australia.
Award winning film “Contact”, to screen at Yandoit Cultural, is constructed around one of the most extraordinary pieces of footage in Australian history: the moment when a group of Martu women and children walked in from their nomadic existence of millennia into the universe of European modernity.
The film centres on Yuwali, the beautiful 17-year old girl we see making that giant leap on the 24th of September 1964.
Now 62, Yuwali’s account of the “first contact” experience is probably the fullest and most revealing ever caught on film.
Her group of twenty were the last remnant Aboriginal mob still living traditionally, without any contact or knowledge of modern Australia, in the remote Great Sandy Desert.
A huge space rocket test – Blue Streak – was to be fired in May 1964 at their home in the dry Percival Lakes. The authorities sent in patrol officers to evacuate anyone living there to protect them from rocket debris.
The days counting down to blast off drive the narrative of the film. Back at the Lakes, Yuwali gives a riveting account as she and her group are chased hundreds of kilometres around the desert trying to escape the “devilmen” in the “rocks that move” (four wheel drives). The climax is both extraordinary and emotional.
The film, directed by Bentley Dean and Martin Butler, has won numerous awards including Best Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival, 2009 and Best Achievement in Directing for Documentary, Australian Directors Guild, 2009.
The film will be introduced by co-director, Bentley Dean, and the presentation will be followed by a Questions and Answers session.
Date: Sunday June 1, 2025
Time: 5pm
Venue: Yandoit Cultural- the old church in the bush- Uniting Church Rd, off High St, Yandoit
What: Screening of CONTACT- Introduced by co-director, Bentley Dean, followed by Q&A
Entry by Donation: Support film makers, indigenous programs & community venues.
Bookings: https://yandoitcultural.org/bookings/
The full program can be downloaded from bendigo.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-05/City-Greater-Bendigo-CVIFF-program-2025.pdf
