Documenting illicit love, hopes and dreams

Monro’s belief stems from more than mere assumption, as her own documentary, Nin’s Brother, is set to screen on SBS later this year. “There are so many more opportunities for Aboriginal filmmakers to tell their stories now, in the form of grants and commissions ... and that’s what our people have always done, pass down knowledge and retain it in stories,” Monro says.

As she sits across from the film’s producer, Lisa Duff, at a local Redfern café, it is immediately apparent that the bond between the two women goes further than the teacher-student relationship they experienced at the Eora Centre Aboriginal TAFE. Their work together over the last five years on Nin’s Brother, their first joint documentary project, has taken them across the sun-speckled nation and into each other’s lives.

Nin’s Brother follows Monro’s journey to uncover the truth about the suspicious circumstances under which her great uncle Milton died in a remote South Australian mining town in 1960, and enabled her family, particularly her grandmother, to finally experience peace. “The story of his death has been passed through the generations of my family. All we knew was quite vague – that he fell in love with a white woman, was shot by her father and buried in a mine,” Monro says.

The reality was a lot more complex. As Milton’s death certificate was discovered, so too was a tale of illicit love and a complex case of wrongly-accused murder suicide, that, owing to Milton’s race and legal status, never even justified a police report. Though the two women have uncovered much, they realise there are some things they will never know.

Monro’s work documents more than her personal challenges, but the unflinching, stark realities of the 1960s social climate. “Indigenous Australian’s weren’t even citizens at this point, and the Government had no obligation to notify a family when a relative had died. Men were forced to travel great distances for work, as Milton was, and with no money or resources of their own, it was common for families to lose a loved one and find it forever unexplained,” Lisa says.

“Milton’s death was a great loss to the family. We lost what I have now learnt was a gypsy soul with a larrikin fighting spirit, a strong respect for women and most importantly, a man with the potential to pass special information down from one generation to the next,” Monro says. “Without Lisa I would have given up, as it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions. I’ve been through disgust, anger and frustration but I’ve gotten to the point where everything is right. My grandmother’s brother no longer rests in an unmarked grave but beside his father and grandfather.”

Monro is excited about her future in film. “When this is completed, I have a contemporary drama in the works. I want to celebrate Aboriginal lifestyle and culture and show people that we have always been the same as them, with crucial hopes, dreams, desires and pains. That’s what I’d like to do.”

Nin’s Brother is funded by the Screen Australia Indigenous Unit and is set to screen on SBS in June.

Source: South Sydney Herald February 2010 www.southsydneyherald.com.au