‘Fake Aboriginal identity’ film is banned. By Matthew Denham.
An Indigenous-made film about a white person who identifies as Aboriginal has been banned by the bodies that funded and commissioned it, over fears it could spark litigation and is “harmful”.
The short film, My Journey, by Tasmanian Indigenous newcomer filmmakers Nathan Maynard and Adam Thompson [who look like regular white guys in their 30s or 40s], was to be screened as part of a GRIT film festival in Hobart last weekend.
Their “mockumentary” was pulled because of concerns held by the funding body, the Tasmanian Community Fund, and the commissioning body, Wide Angle Tasmania, that it could be defamatory and may cause community “harm”.
“I absolutely see it as political censorship,” Thompson told The Australian. “It is shocking …. essentially, they have censored it.
Thompson would not reveal the plot, because he and Maynard are now planning to run their own screening of My Journey. However, he did not deny it was about a white person discovering their Aboriginality.
The number of Tasmanians identifying as Indigenous has grown from 36 in 1966 to 23,572 in 2016 and 30,186 currently. The state government has adopted policies designed to remove barriers to recognition as Aboriginal.
Thompson said the film was fictional and he did not accept concerns over possible defamation. However, Wide Angle chairman David Gurney said such concerns were based on legal advice. Mr Gurney said the film focused on Smithton, in northwest Tasmania, and there were real concerns it could defame particular people. “The TCF was concerned that the film is potentially litigious and … harmful to a very specific community,” Mr Gurney said. “TCF asked them (the film-makers) to make some changes to the film, which they refused to do.
Freedom of speech and truth now give way to not hurting the feelings of politically favored groups. Notice how selectively the rules are enforced — feel free to say hurtful and even untrue things about white people, straights, and Christians, for instance.
The politically favored groups therefore increasingly control discourse in modern Australia, condemning us to live in silence in a web of PC lies. (As they say, silence is violence.)
Trying to make them live by their rules, as in this case, fails because they simply change the rules when it suits. Stone-age tribalism.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
