Films : “On the Job” – A series about people and their work

Extract

A series of seven films has been produced for the National Aboriginal Employment Development Committee by Film Australia, the production division of the Australian Film Commission. The films are the outcome of eighteen months in the field by Producer Elisabeth Knight and Director K. Gow. They travelled thousands of kilometers with their film crew and visited twenty major locations spanning and circling the continent, from Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory to Broome in Western Australia, to Port Lincoln in South Australia; from Mackay, Queensland to Brewarrina, New South Wales, to Melbourne.

The four We Did It films show Aboriginal people at work, talking about how they got their jobs, what they like about them and some tips for other job seekers. The four films show Aboriginal people from Victoria (12 minutes), South Australia (11 minutes) Western Australia(12 minutes) and Rockhampton and Mackay (11 minutes) in a range of jobs and apprenticeships – nursing, the Public Service, education, horticulture, library work, building and mechanical trades.

Women of Utopia (19 minutes) is a first-class introduction by a group of Aboriginal women of Utopia Station in the Northern Territory to the process by which they make their distinctively beautiful batik fabrics.

This Is Working (27 minutes) features four different projects being undertaken by Aboriginal people in New South Wales, thereby creating jobs for themselves and developing skills and expertise.