nominated for
The QUT Creative Industries Award for
Best Tertiary Drama 10-30 minutes
The Warner Roadshow Studios Award for Best Overall Film 2008
The Warner Roadshow Studios Award for Best Overall Film 2008
SYNOPSIS - A
troubled boy runs away. Exploring the turbulent joy of his sudden
freedom he enters the creative maelstrom of an artist's world
to
discover a powerful new reality. What will he leave behind?
Escaping
the destructive influences of city living, Neil, an Aboriginal artist
strives to revive his identity by going bush. Experiencing his own
troubles, Tomi, a twelve-year old boy with disabilities struggles to
liberate himself from the intensely clinical environment of his highly
managed life. Similarly plagued
by externally imposed limits and social demands, their chance encounter
provides a powerful stimulus for both characters to initiate profound
change.
BLUE COLOUR features Sonny Dallas Law, Mischa Reinthal, Kristina Andersen, Belinda Berrington, with Buda K, Kaylah Tyson, Jesse Martin, Andrew Legg, Howard William, Dave Irvine and Brian Whyte.
Written and directed by Teone Reinthal. ©2008. Gorgeous new music soundtrack from Steve Reinthal with special guest artists Poetic Murriz. Animated photographs by Brian Whyte. Duration 19 mins 38 - Made in Brisbane, Australia - Digital Video - Contains Coarse Language
PRODUCTION NOTES
I watched you all reach out to me, and I knew my separateness,
my remote control, what did you hear when I spoke?
I was roaring, in an absence of words LET GO...
but your faces were fogged, and I just kept struggling.
I whispered into you, we are clouds, drifting by,
not even remotely in control.
my remote control, what did you hear when I spoke?
I was roaring, in an absence of words LET GO...
but your faces were fogged, and I just kept struggling.
I whispered into you, we are clouds, drifting by,
not even remotely in control.
As a very little girl, adults generally treated me with an extraordinary tenderness and spoke to me with encouraging ideas that inspired and motivated me to be all that I could possibly imagine myself to be.
Venturing into the school playground, I abruptly discovered the devastation of rejection, isolation and cruelty. The shock of that discovery gradually compressed into an armoring of defensive emotional numbness until I could shut out all feeling at-will, which in some ways created a pseudo-autism that I could employ whenever I encountered strong and overwhelming pain or other intense feelings.
I would break up and float away in fragmented pieces. My face would somehow manage to express appropriate shapes and I could utilise my skill of adapting to other people's systems, but I was not at home.
I guess the fragmenting of my personality created so many characters who could handle most social challenges, that I could apply my skills to a wide range of diverse uses, yet I was labeled a dreamer because people would often catch me staring into nowhere. I harbored a watcher-within, a record keeper of all my journeys, and the watcher was always a silent, sacred witness upon all my roads.
My short film, Blue Colour is not a story of art-as-therapy. It is a personal story of life-as-therapy. It explores aspects of learned social patterns, and attempts to show that chance encounters may powerfully signal opportunities for escape into change. In many ways it is a story that speaks in private symbols about human perceptions, and champions our individual abilities to navigate through our own worlds, each according to our unique sets of values, beliefs and experiences. Several years ago, while working as a clinical hypnotherapist, I was asked to meet with a twelve-year old boy who was experiencing severe autism spectrum disorders. The boy had never yet spoken and was very agitated in his physical movement. Eventually his intensely controlling mother was persuaded to give us some time alone. I instinctively saw an opportunity to show who I was, rather than attempt to verbalise an introduction, so I immersed my hands into a puddle of bright blue paint and printed them onto my face, creating a very strong visual greeting. He stopped fidgeting and froze.
I silently held out my hands to him, whereupon he shyly stepped forward and, placing his palms on mine, coated his own hands in the paint and joyfully squelched the wet blue colour through his own hands. He made one print on his own face. Together we made an incredible blue mess.
Unable to stay away any longer, his mother returned and disgustedly scrubbed the paint off her son and shepherded him off to their car. His grandmother apologised and turned to leave, but the boy broke away from his mother's grip and ran back to me. He awkwardly placed both of his arms around me and said in a raw, untried voice
"Thank you".
His mother grimly tightened her grip and removed the boy. I never saw him again.
My purpose in making such an overtly visual introduction was not intended as an art-as-therapy approach, it was purely a non-verbal gesture of signaling difference to someone who clearly needed a positive encounter with difference. Hand-printing my unique signature in an electric colour temporarily caused a pattern-break in this boy's reading of familiar culture, which invoked a clear response. I had introduced myself with an encoded greeting, and as a result, he altered his own patterns of behaviour significantly.
Conceptually, Blue Colour sought to communicate in the language of those who commonly go unnoticed; people alienated by mainstream Australian society; people of disability, people of Aboriginality, people of cultural minority, people of difference- the wounded among us, we who have existed at the fringes. It was important to make reference to experiences of alienation by working in the silent codes of the inconspicuous, I was striving to touch minority members in audiences, so that the shy, submissive, uncertain shadows of us might experience Blue Colour and momentarily breathe a little deeper, encountering some sense of ‘represented place'.
Grand ideas for a small film...
It wasn't until I reviewed the rushes that I saw with amazement, as Tomi handprints Neil, and Neil exits the frame, that this whole story was actually about my own hands and the fractured nature of my ability to express many parts of my silenced feelings. Each character in my story represented a member of my own tribe of hidden fragments, my wounded parts and as the film unfolded before me I suddenly saw myself, all the parts of my childhood dancing out the drama of my journey. I was using stereotypes and archetypes, and all the complex meanings of that were left in an abstraction of acceptance. I simply allowed myself to come forward and be seen.
It's important that I acknowledge Sonny Dallas Law for his
tremendous contribution to my understanding of Blue Colour's thematic
symbolism from the Indigenous perspective.
Sonny undertook the role of Neil with enormous dedication to the
integrity of the story, he painted all of the artworks in the
tradition of his own Wakka Wakka Owl Dreaming, he journeyed through
the story with me, taking directorial lead whenever we were filming
scenes involving Indigenous cultural references, particularly the
initiation sequence. Indeed all of the performers have brought their
own clarity and insights to their characters, which in turn has helped
me to really begin to envision them as real.
I sincerely wish to thank all the amazingly talented people who helped to realise this picture, to the cast, crew, lecturers, friends and cultural advisors, a heartfelt thank you.