Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
1996
Z126936
1996
single work
biography
(taught in 26 units)
'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth...
The three girls - aged 8, 11 and 14 - managed to escape from the settlement's repressive conditions and brutal treatment. Barefoot without provisions or maps, they set out to find the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it passed near their home in the north. Tracked by native police and search planes, they hid in terror, surviving on bush tucker, desperate to return to the world they knew.
The journey to freedom - longer than many of the legendary walks of [the Australian nation's] explorer heroes... told from family recollections, letters between the authorities and the Aboriginal Protector, and ... newspaper reports of the runaway children.' Source: Publisher's blurb
In this course, students will come up with an idea for a film, write a treatment or short story, and shape this story into a script. Through the workshop process, story ideas will be subject to critique, and students will be encouraged to develop their early drafts. Lectures will address theoretical and practical concerns involved in writing stories and film scripts, and will examine several stories and film scripts as examples. The course will include some consideration of the practical processes involved in the production of screenplays
Portfolio of Creative Work comprising drafts and rewrites of treatment and screenplay of approximately 3,500 words: 60%
Written and oral comment on peers' work: 15%
1000-1500 word essay: 25%
