Ahead of this weekend’s second annual Shoalhaven First Nations Film Festival, we spoke to two young filmmakers and emerging leaders of the South Coast, from arts company Beyond Empathy, about what they are working on now and what they are looking forward to at the festival.
Shaniece Igano, Producer/Project Coordinator, Illawarra
As a teenager, Shaniece was an extra in award-winning short film, “2506” about young people in the Illawarra town of Berkeley and now, more than 15 years later, she is an integral part of the team at Beyond Empathy – the creative arts company behind many storytelling projects from communities across Australia. This is an edited version of her interview with JBW.
At the moment, as the Illawarra project coordinator, we finished a two-year project in the Bellambi region, called Flow.
We made a stop-motion amination film, gnarly, involving 48 young people. We’ve come off the ride of the film and now we are floating around, exploring creativity with the young people.
Before [I joined] Beyond Empathy, I was making films at home and editing films, I had a passion for filmmaking. Then I got into Beyond Empathy and eventually made my way to making a short film called Legoland, which was an award-winning film that was screened across NSW.
I had a passion to create films and also to explore what filmmaking is, in terms of community – uplifting the voices of people in the community. I was working in contractor roles with Beyond Empathy and helping other organisations create these films.
Then I worked on Rites of Passage and Protection, which was a feature-length film. And I thought, okay, this has the potential to be a job. I can actually become a filmmaker. I can become an artist. I can create things and get paid for it.
I never thought it was possible, living in a place considered disadvantaged where not many people are offered opportunities like this.
Go with the Flow
With Flow, the stop-motion animation, were initially just creating art, photography, then that turned into taking photos of little animal figurines. Then the young people were like, we could make our own figurines.
So we gave them air dry clay and from there, those sculptures they created are the stars of the stop-motion animation.
They designed the stories – very crazy stories that kind of don’t make sense, but they do if you look at it for a bit longer than intended. It’s a very dreamlike film because it’s based on their dreams and their life experiences all interwoven.
I’m used to just filming things. So it was a realm I was unfamiliar with. And that’s one of the main things that Beyond Empathy does, we explore the unfamiliar and the unknown. We don’t go for the expected. We explore things and experiment. Of course, if they want to make their own sculptures, we’re going to do that!
I’m called the ‘lead coordinator’ but I’m not the one leading it; it’s their voices and their ideas.
Traditional leaders, when you think of what’s in the media, they are perceived as these stoic people in front of everyone. Whereas the leadership I showcase, I don’t want to be like that. We’re alongside, then further stepping back to have everyone at the forefront. These young people and these communities need their stories heard.
The Value of Art for Young People
When it comes to creating stories and sharing stories, I’m not going to put down an idea because it seems too outlandish or what I think is impossible. I love to push for it, I’m always saying yes to everything. And it’s always playful, there’s no expectation to create things that have to be serious or show a deep message.
The deep messages can come from the process of creating the films, and the outcome itself. That is showing the value that art has on these young people.
People from disadvantaged communities or people who aren’t offered opportunities a lot are kind of dismissed, put in a box, they can just sit in the corner while the people who are offered the opportunities can enjoy the good things in life.
I like to think that I give really good opportunities to those young people that don’t come from well-off backgrounds a chance to shine and stand in front of an audience and receive those claps and admiration.
I strive for them to understand that art is important, no matter what background you come from, and creating can be explore no matter what background.
Art is so important in identifying ourselves.
For me, art enables me to explore and be able to push myself. It feels like a welcoming hug, like an aunt or uncle you haven’t seen in a long time and you get that hug, and you’re like, oh I’m so welcome here, no matter how long of a time you haven’t seen them. No matter the process or what you’re making, the process is the journey of it all, exploring and those little nuances you think to yourself. It’s really important.
On the Shoalhaven First Nations Film Festival
To be able to sit in an audience and view those films [is what I’m looking forward to]. Having a festival specifically for First Nations is so important to honour those stories.
Tiger Watson, Associate Producer, First Nations Emerging Leader, Shoalhaven
Part of the creative team on A Presence, a poetic short film created by young people and produced by Beyond Empathy, Tiger is also a broadcaster and storyteller in other mediums. Currently on at the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum, A Presence is set against the striking backdrop of the Shoalhaven and explores how nature, creativity, and culture shape identity and foster connection. This is an edited version of their interview with JBW.
Currently, we are at the end of the funding period so we are exploring creativity at the moment. Personally, I’m learning a lot more editing skills so I can edit films myself and with our other creative producer.
We are working on a bunch of short films to turn into one big film after a long process. There’s no real end to the product. It’s about the process.
The biggest part with the process of art and creating with these young people is bringing art back from being an individual thing, because it is, but there is the flip side of the coin that it’s a community thing. Art has lost that part and we’re trying to bring it back. It’s crazy to be that it’s such a bizarre thing to mix community and arts together.
On the Shoalhaven First Nations Film Festival
The SFNFF is facilitating a space for young people to show their stuff and have an audience to clap for it. And more spaces where it doesn’t need to be the weight of the person’s name behind the art that gives it meaning.
It’s the experiences and the process that made it. It wasn’t a famous person, it was these young people with all their stories and lives, and they got to insert a piece of that into this beautiful cauldron of something.
We get to witness that, only by the mere fact that all these people came together. What are the odds of that, that we got to create this beautiful piece?
The Value of Art
Before I started working with Beyond Empathy in around 2022, I would never have believed I’d be involved in a film. That would have been crazy to me because, to me, a film – at least from the echo chamber of school – you have to study for that. You have to have money. You have to work specifically towards that to get that, not just exist within your community of people.
I think, once I first did a bit of filming with BE, as I was slowly starting to get involved, it really showed me how low pressure art should be.
It shouldn’t be, you create this now by this angle and this degree and it will come out perfect if you just do all the steps right.
It’s not about that. That’s the part I love with all aspects of art.
There’s something about film, with the sound and the visual and there are so many layers that all the people participating can contribute to in a way that is so personal to them. That’s a big thing for me.
I’d met BE while I was at an alternative school, and I thought they were tokenistic in a way of a lot of places that come to talk to First Nations young people, disadvantaged people, to get their names on things like that without actually representing them and helping them with the things they need and the creative choices they want to make.
But then I ended up in a homeless shelter and BE was working out of a spare room downstairs and I did a couple of podcasts with them and went on the radio and actually got paid for it.
The feeling of going on the radio, without ever thinking about it, just on a whim, it was like, why not? I can do that, sure. Then after, the achievement was, wow, that was something.
Then after about a year and a half I was brought back into contact with BE. We ended up holding a pitch idea for making a film. It only came through sitting in a circle with a bunch of young people at Bundanon and chatting. No one is the originator of the idea, it’s from whoever was in the room that day. After that, just being in small sections of the creativity and being in the background, it made me see how important every person is in the process.
It doesn’t matter if you are a perfect artist. It’s the passion. It’s the oomph and the energy you bring into one room. Around my community.
How to Bring More Young People into Art
It’s hard to say, this is the way to do it. There is no one way. But I believe not putting pressure on the words that come out of their mouth.
Before I got involved [with BE], I was involved in other odd community things, and it would always feel like there was something you had to say, it had to be worded in a certain way or you had to represent a certain thing or do a certain thing.
It really puts a barrier between young people and adults, and young people who want to create art and the adults who are already in the art world because there is that between of, how did you get there though? And also, you don’t know who I am.
Young people know that we’re just on the outside looking in. They are in their echo chamber, we’re in our echo chamber and we’re trying to reach over and say, hey guys, there’s some cool stuff we are trying to integrate and shift.
In my opinion, it’s about treating young people – and people – as just people.
Because they all have stories to share and if you start a conversation with them, they’ll tell you how they want to share it and what ways would work for them, physically, musically, cooking even.
I think we approach young people like we have the answers and that’s not the answer.
They have the answers and they know when we’re approaching them like we have all the solutions to the world, they are going to shut us out completely.
Why it’s so Important
Most of the time, we assume that [creativity is] the arts or the established thing like Hollywood.
But it’s a human right to create.
It gets it out, whatever’s bubbling on the inside. It’s got to come out somehow.
Beyond Empathy is an arts company founded in 2005 by Phillip Crawford and Kim McConville, working with urban, regional and remote communities across Australia on creative projects, including award-winning films made by young people and led by communities.
Tickets to the Shoalhaven First Nations Film Festival are still available online, $15. The event starts at 12.30pm at the Huskisson Pictures on Saturday 13 September.
