WASH MY SOUL IN THE RIVER'S FLOW
****
Director: Philippa Bateman
Screenwriter: Philippa Bateman
Principal cast:
Archie Roach
Ruby Hunter
Paul Grabowsky
Patrick Nolan
Country: Australia
Classification: PG
Runtime: 88 mins.
Australian release date: 10 March 2022.
Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow, directed by Philippa Bateman, is a cinematic record of a legendary concert performed at Hamer Hall, Melbourne, in 2004. It features the First Nations duo of Ngarrindjeri/Kokatha/Pitjantjara woman Ruby Hunter and Gunditjmara/Bundjalung man Archie Roach, performing their Kura Tungar - Songs from the River concert, which received a standing ovation from the two thousand or so people in the audience. They were supported by the 22-member Australian Art Orchestra playing contemporary jazz orchestration scored by Paul Grabowsky. The concert won the Helpmann Award for Best Contemporary Australian Concert and was also performed at the Sydney Opera House and the Adelaide Festival Centre.
The singer-songwriter duo met when they were teenagers and were living on the streets, having left the homes of their white foster families; finding each other turned their lives around. Both Roach and Hunter had been stolen from their birth families, victims of the forcible removal of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander children that was the policy of successive Australian Governments between 1869 and 1969. Roach was only three-years-old when he was taken and Hunter was eight. As a result, her memories of being stolen are more vivid (her parents were told that the kids were being taken to the circus) but she is remarkably forgiving and acknowledges that music was her salvation. Executive Producer Emma Donovan says of Hunter, “She had a razor wit, a phenomenal strength of character, a capacity to find humour in the darkest of places and didn’t have much sympathy, nor time for self-pity.” Roach became the bigger ‘name’ in the music world, especially after the great success of his song Took the Children Away (he was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2020) but, in fact, it was Hunter who he looked to for guidance and advice, both in his life and his career. She, too, was a gifted singer/songwriter (in 1994, she was the first Indigenous woman to be signed to a major record label), so theirs was a truly symbiotic, inspirational love story and their love shines through in the footage of the two of them together.
Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow has three components to its structure – the concert itself, together with some rehearsal footage, interviews of Roach and Hunter conducted by concert director Patrick Nolan and glorious scenes of the Murray River, a place of particular significance to Hunter’s family. Bonnie Elliot and Maxx Corkindale’s cinematography of the Murray’s fluvial environs is simply stunning as the camera glides along the river, flowing from song to song, representing a metaphor for what happened in the past and, perhaps, indicating future renewal and redemption. The images morph into the concert and interview footage, combining the forces of landscape and nature with the musical force of Hunter and Roach. The performance shows the couple’s strong bonds; at one point, Ruby explains that she is the “rowdy trouble-maker” to Archie’s “silent hero” but that their songs “…aren’t calling for revolution, just recognition and the truth.”
Philippa Bateman put together a small crew to film the original 2004 concert but, as sometimes happens, the footage was never compiled into a finished film. When she unearthed it years later, she was blown away by the power of the images and the artistry of the performers, so she started to work on what was to become Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow. She says, “From the start, I aimed to open a door cinematically into the songs, to offer the audience a chance to immerse themselves viscerally, not only in the music but the grandeur and singularity of the land Hunter and Roach sing about. The challenge was to find a way to cinematically express the emotional pull of Country, as experienced by Archie and Ruby in memory, song and performance - without breaking the flow of the music.” I’m not entirely convinced the images and the music meld into each other seamlessly but, in any event, it probably doesn’t matter. Both the images and the music are sublime, either taken together or separately.
Screenwriter: Philippa Bateman
Principal cast:
Archie Roach
Ruby Hunter
Paul Grabowsky
Patrick Nolan
Country: Australia
Classification: PG
Runtime: 88 mins.
Australian release date: 10 March 2022.
Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow, directed by Philippa Bateman, is a cinematic record of a legendary concert performed at Hamer Hall, Melbourne, in 2004. It features the First Nations duo of Ngarrindjeri/Kokatha/Pitjantjara woman Ruby Hunter and Gunditjmara/Bundjalung man Archie Roach, performing their Kura Tungar - Songs from the River concert, which received a standing ovation from the two thousand or so people in the audience. They were supported by the 22-member Australian Art Orchestra playing contemporary jazz orchestration scored by Paul Grabowsky. The concert won the Helpmann Award for Best Contemporary Australian Concert and was also performed at the Sydney Opera House and the Adelaide Festival Centre.
The singer-songwriter duo met when they were teenagers and were living on the streets, having left the homes of their white foster families; finding each other turned their lives around. Both Roach and Hunter had been stolen from their birth families, victims of the forcible removal of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander children that was the policy of successive Australian Governments between 1869 and 1969. Roach was only three-years-old when he was taken and Hunter was eight. As a result, her memories of being stolen are more vivid (her parents were told that the kids were being taken to the circus) but she is remarkably forgiving and acknowledges that music was her salvation. Executive Producer Emma Donovan says of Hunter, “She had a razor wit, a phenomenal strength of character, a capacity to find humour in the darkest of places and didn’t have much sympathy, nor time for self-pity.” Roach became the bigger ‘name’ in the music world, especially after the great success of his song Took the Children Away (he was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2020) but, in fact, it was Hunter who he looked to for guidance and advice, both in his life and his career. She, too, was a gifted singer/songwriter (in 1994, she was the first Indigenous woman to be signed to a major record label), so theirs was a truly symbiotic, inspirational love story and their love shines through in the footage of the two of them together.
Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow has three components to its structure – the concert itself, together with some rehearsal footage, interviews of Roach and Hunter conducted by concert director Patrick Nolan and glorious scenes of the Murray River, a place of particular significance to Hunter’s family. Bonnie Elliot and Maxx Corkindale’s cinematography of the Murray’s fluvial environs is simply stunning as the camera glides along the river, flowing from song to song, representing a metaphor for what happened in the past and, perhaps, indicating future renewal and redemption. The images morph into the concert and interview footage, combining the forces of landscape and nature with the musical force of Hunter and Roach. The performance shows the couple’s strong bonds; at one point, Ruby explains that she is the “rowdy trouble-maker” to Archie’s “silent hero” but that their songs “…aren’t calling for revolution, just recognition and the truth.”
Philippa Bateman put together a small crew to film the original 2004 concert but, as sometimes happens, the footage was never compiled into a finished film. When she unearthed it years later, she was blown away by the power of the images and the artistry of the performers, so she started to work on what was to become Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow. She says, “From the start, I aimed to open a door cinematically into the songs, to offer the audience a chance to immerse themselves viscerally, not only in the music but the grandeur and singularity of the land Hunter and Roach sing about. The challenge was to find a way to cinematically express the emotional pull of Country, as experienced by Archie and Ruby in memory, song and performance - without breaking the flow of the music.” I’m not entirely convinced the images and the music meld into each other seamlessly but, in any event, it probably doesn’t matter. Both the images and the music are sublime, either taken together or separately.