Cirrus@Austlit

'The 2010 film adaptation of Bran Nue Dae was a risky venture for Rachel Perkins, despite her being a major Aboriginal filmmaker. She was tinkering with the much loved and awarded original stage musical by Broome musician Jimmy Chi, which revolutionised Australian theatre in the 1990s. It also marked a major creative shift from her previous dark and challenging works, One Night the Moon (2001) and First Australians (2008). As Perkins explained in an interview with Margaret Pomeranz, the film was to be enjoyed ‘for being light, for it being entertaining, for it being joyous and celebratory, and a little bit silly and mad . . . not to teach about Aboriginal history, or Indigenous politics or culture’.' (Introduction)