You are warmly invited to attend a public lecture by acclaimed filmmaker and scholar, Dr Romaine Moreton, entitled “Interrogating Western Media Art Forms in One Billion Beats (2016)”, presented by Monash Arts and the School of Media, Film and Journalism.

 

Dr Romaine Moreton is Goenpul Jagara of Stradbroke Island and Bundjulung of northern New South Wales. An internationally recognised writer of poetry, prose and film, she has published over 100 poems, prose and short stories and three anthologies of her poetry. She has also written and directed two short films, the award winning The Farm (2009) and The Oysterman (2012), and is currently working on three feature films.

 

In this lecture she will discuss the historicising of Indigenous family storytelling and interrogation of western media art forms performed by her in her new transmedia project “One Billion Beats” -- co-written and co-directed with Alana Valentine, music and sound design by Dr Lou Bennett, and visual artistry by Sean Bacon; staged earlier this year at Campbelltown Art Centre, NSW to sold out audiences.

 

One Billion Beats is a multi-disciplinary work for performance presentation. Combining spoken word poetry, contemporary theatre techniques, music, song, and audio visual imagery, it is an excavation of historical cinematic representation of Aboriginal people in Australian film, interlaced with an autobiographical reflection by Moreton on her experience of being both hostage to and liberated from the constraints of Western paradigms in relation to Indigenous identity. Using a Decolonising framework to interrogate Australian cinematic archive, One Billion Beats examines the colonial gaze and dissects colonial cinematic representations of the Indigenous body to assert new frames of understanding by engaging with works held at the Australian National Film and Sound Archive.

 

Long after I experienced it, One Billion Beats continues to resound with the beating of hearts, poems and music, its engaging performer sharing with us her distinctive life, deep feelings and her intellectual challenge to racism.  Realtime, Review.

 

Moreton’s voice will resonate with you long after the show has ended:

“We are here and we are many,
And we shall surprise you by our will,
We shall rise from this place where you expect
To keep us down,
And we shall surprise you by our will.”

Bravo Moreton. Bravo Campbelltown Arts Centre… This work is a testament to the one billion people that walked this country before 1788, to their personal stories and resilience. I stand and applaud it. FBI Radio Review

 

Romaine Moreton was appointed as a Research Fellow/Filmmaker-in-Residence in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University in 2014. She is currently working with Therese Davis (Monash) and Chris Healy (University of Melbourne) on the ARC-funded project: “Australian Film and Television: New Frames of Understanding.” She is also developing three feature film projects.