Poster

Rabbit-Proof Fence

Year

2002

Genre

Adventure, Drama, History

Country

Australia

Director

Actors

Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, David Gulpilil, Ningali Lawford, Myarn Lawford, Deborah Mailman, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh, Natasha Wanganeen, Garry McDonald, Roy Billing, Lorna Lesley, Celine O'Leary, Kate Roberts

Description

Western Australia, 1931. Government policy includes taking half-caste children from their Aboriginal mothers and sending them a thousand miles away to what amounts to indentured servitude, "to save them from themselves." Molly, Daisy, and Grace (two sisters and a cousin who are 14, 10, and 8) arrive at their Gulag and promptly escape, under Molly's lead. For days they walk north, following a fence that keeps rabbits from settlements, eluding a native tracker and the regional constabulary. Their pursuers take orders from the government's "chief protector of Aborigines," A.O. Neville, blinded by Anglo-Christian certainty, evolutionary world view and conventional wisdom. Can the girls survive? ------- It's 1931 in Western Australia. A.O. Neville is the government's official in dealing with aborigine issues. Under the law, he has the right to seize "half-caste" children - those with both aborigine and white parentage - to be housed on native settlements, where they are to be "re-educated" to western ways eventually to become servants for whites. The assertion is that this measure will protect the aborigine population, as if they are left to intermingle within aborigine communities, half-castes will turn the community white as the weaker aborigine gene will be bred out within a few generations. It is under this law that Neville seizes, among others, sisters, fourteen year old Molly Craig and eight year old Daisy Craig Kadibill, and their ten year old cousin Gracie Fields. Ever since arriving at the Moore River Native Settlement camp, Molly plans to escape with her sister and cousin, and walk all the way back to Jigalong to their real home, real family and their traditional way of life. Molly uses the 3,000 kilometer long rabbit-proof fence which runs adjacent to Jigalong to navigate her way home. But Neville and his trackers will not let a bunch of half-caste girls circumvent the law and its associated grand plan. ------- In 1931, with the Aborigine Act in Australia, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the State of Western Australia A.O. Neville had the power to relocate half-caste children from their families to educational centers to give the culture of the white man. When the fourteen year-old aboriginal girl Molly Craig is taken from her mother in Jigalong with her eight year-old sister Daisy Kadibill and their ten year-old cousin Gracie Fields to the distant Moore River Native Center, they run away trying to return to the tribe in the desert. They are chased by the skilled tracker Moodoo and the police under the command of Neville, and have to survive to their long journey back home. ------- Three little girls. Snatched from their mothers' arms. Spirited 1,500 miles away. Denied their very identity. Forced to adapt to a strange new world. They will attempt the impossible. A daring escape. A run from the authorities. An epic journey across an unforgiving landscape that will test their very will to survive. Their only resources, tenacity, determination, ingenuity and each other. Their one hope, find the rabbit-proof fence that might just guide them home. A true story. ------- This is the true story of Molly Craig, a young black Australian girl who leads her younger sister and cousin in an escape from an official government camp, set up as part of an official government policy to train them as domestic workers and integrate them into white society. With grit and determination Molly guides the girls on an epic journey, one step ahead of the authorities, over 1,500 miles of Australia's outback in search of the rabbit-proof fence that bisects the continent and will lead them home. These three girls are part of what is referred to today as the 'Stolen Generations.'

Comments

Duration

90 minutes (at 25 frames per second)

Filesize

663 MB

Video

DivX 5 - resolution: 672x288

Audio