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Rachel Perkins

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Rachel Perkins
Perkins at the 2012 AACTA Awards in Sydney
Born1970 (age 53–54)
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Occupation(s)Producer, director, writer
Years active1998–present
SpouseRichard McGrath (divorced)
Children1
FatherCharles Perkins
RelativesHetty Perkins (grandmother)
Hetti Perkins (sister)
Madeleine Madden (niece)

Rachel Perkins (born 1970) is an Indigenous Australian film and television director, producer, and screenwriter. She founded and was co-director of the independent film production company Blackfella Films from 1992 until 2022. Perkins and the company were responsible for producing First Australians (2008), an award-winning documentary series that remains the highest-selling educational title in Australia, and which Perkins regards as her most important work. She directed the films Radiance (1998), One Night the Moon (2001), Bran Nue Dae (2009), the courtroom drama telemovie Mabo (2012), and Jasper Jones (2017). The acclaimed television drama series Redfern Now was made by Blackfella Films, and Perkins directed two episodes as well as the feature-length conclusion to the series, Promise Me (2015).

Perkins is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman from Central Australia, who was raised in Canberra. She is the daughter of Aboriginal activist Charles Perkins and his wife Eileen.

Early life and education

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Perkins was born in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory,[1][2] in 1970.[3] She is the daughter of Charlie Perkins,[1] granddaughter of Hetty Perkins, and has Arrernte, Kalkadoon,[4] Irish, and German ancestry.[5] Her siblings are Adam and Hetti Perkins, an art curator, and her niece is actress Madeleine Madden.[6][7]

She and her sister attended Melrose High School in Canberra.[8]

Perkins' paternal grandmother's people were from Alice Springs, and she wanted to learn more about that side of the family's culture, so, after finishing school in 1988, she applied for a job as a television presenter with the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), mainly to get the airfare to fly there. As she expected, she was not given the job, but they offered her a traineeship at Imparja Television, where she learnt the basics of production, including editing and sound recording.[9][4]

After starting her career as a filmmaker, in the early 1990s she won a scholarship to study production at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in Sydney, where she met and collaborated with Warwick Thornton.[10] She completed the Specialist Extension Course Certificate – Producing in 1995, and also met and became friends with Ivan Sen there.[11]

Career

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A few years after beginning her traineeship at CAAMA, aged 21, Perkins became executive producer of the Indigenous unit at SBS Television, the only person in the unit.[9]

In 1992, Perkins founded Blackfella Films,[2] a documentary and narrative production company creating distinctive Australian content for television, live theatre, and online platforms, with a particular focus on Indigenous Australian stories. Much of her film work was done under the company name.[12]

Perkins wrote, directed, and co-produced (with Ned Lander) a 55-minute documentary film about her father's 1965 protest bus journey into regional New South Wales, dubbed the "Freedom Ride". The film was called Freedom Ride,[13] and it was part of the 1993 series Blood Brothers, which profiled four prominent Aboriginal men.[14] Perkins said that she travelled with her father to many of the places that the Freedom Ride visited, and it was also a good opportunity to interviewer her father about his early life and get an insight into him and events that she would not otherwise have had access to. She also gained an "understanding of the importance of filmmaking, in terms of capturing Australian cultural history".[9]

In 1996, under the auspices of the Indigenous Branch of the Australian Film Commission, Perkins produced a film for Warwick Thornton (who was also a friend), From Sand to Celluloid – Payback.[9][15][a]

Radiance (1998) was her first feature fiction film as a director. She said later that it took a long time to cast the main characters, who included Trisha Morton-Thomas, Rachael Maza, and Deb Mailman, then a newcomer from Brisbane, and that they rehearsed for six weeks.[9]

In 2001 she co-wrote (with playwright John Romeril[18]) and directed the telemovie One Night the Moon, featuring musicians Paul Kelly, Kev Carmody, and Maireed Hannah.[9]

First Australians was a seven-part documentary series broadcast on SBS Television in 2008. The general manager of SBS Nigel Milan had asked Gordon Briscoe what he could do for Indigenous people, and Briscoe suggested giving them back their history. It was a very ambitious project, and Perkins said that it was the most important thing she would ever work on, "because it really was an opportunity to try and tell the Indigenous story in a comprehensive manner from an Indigenous perspective, over a span of 200 years. It had never been done before".[9] The series took six years to make,[15] and as of 2024 remains the highest-selling educational title in Australia.[19]

Bran Nue Dae, a film version of Jimmy Chi's 1990s hit stage musical, was directed by Perkins and released in 2009.[15]

In 2009 Perkins was curator of the Message Sticks Indigenous Film Festival. This tenth anniversary of the festival held at the Sydney Opera House featured the premiere of Fire Talker, a documentary film about her father Charlie Perkins by Australian filmmaker Ivan Sen.[20][21]

Her courtroom drama / biopic telemovie about land rights campaigner Eddie Koiki Mabo, Mabo, featuring Jimi Bani and Deborah Mailman, was broadcast in 2012.[15]

Also in 2012 Perkins directed two episodes of the first series of Redfern Now in 2012: "Stand Up" and "Pretty Boy Blue", the latter dealing with a death-in-custody.[15] She also directed the feature-length conclusion Redfern Now: Promise Me (2015).[22] Luke Buckmaster of The Guardian gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, praising its "superb cast" and saying "the series concludes at the peak of its power".[23]

Perkins executive produced the first series of First Contact (2014), a reality television show which challenged the non-Indigenous participants of Indigenous Australians.[24]

Also in 2014, she finished making the documentary film Black Panther Woman for SBS. The film was nominated for the Documentary Australia Foundation Award for Australian Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival.[25]

She directed the feature fiction film Jasper Jones, released in 2017.[26]

Perkins wrote, directed, presented, and produced the three-part documentary series The Australian Wars which aired on SBS and NITV in September 2022. This series examines the Australian frontier wars fought across the country when British settlers moved in.[27][19][28]

Perkins has said that of all the filmmaking jobs, she likes editing the best, as it is the most creative part. She also said that she feels a great sense of responsibility "to make films or to use media as a vehicle to tell my people's story and to create change".[9]

Blackfella Films

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Perkins founded Blackfella Films in 1992.[2]

Darren Dale joined the company in 2000, becoming co-director of the company. The award-winning First Australians, a seven-part documentary series broadcast on SBS Television in 2008, won many awards and was also sold overseas. Miranda Dear, formerly head of drama at ABC Television, was a producer and head of drama at Blackfella from 2010 to 2020.[12] Other productions have included the television film Mabo, the TV series Redfern Now, and many more since.[29] In 2009, Blackfella Films was renting space from Bangarra Dance Theatre in offices overlooking Sydney Harbour.[9]

In 2022, Perkins left Blackfella Films.[12]

Other activities

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Perkins served as Commissioner with the Australian Film Commission from 2004 to 2008, and since 2009 has been on the board of Screen Australia.[29] She has been a member of the boards of the New South Wales Film and Television Office (now Screen NSW), the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), National Indigenous Media Association, the Indigenous Screen Australia, and the Australian International Documentary Conference. She has said that she gets onto these boards in order to help drive government policy.[9]

In 2015, she raised funding for the Arrernte Women's Project, which had been established in 2014, one of the goals of which was to record the traditional songs and associated cultural knowledge of the Arrernte women of Central Australia, to create an archive for future generations.[25][30]

Perkins became president of the AIATSIS Foundation in 2015.[31][32] She was a council member from 17 May 2017 to 16 May 2021,[33] and is deputy chair of AIATSIS board from 1 July 2024 30 September 2024.[34]

In 2019, she was invited to give the ABC's annual Boyer Lecture, which she titled The End of Silence, and broadcast on ABC RN in November and available as a podcast.[5]

Perkins served two terms on the Australian Heritage Council, from February 2015 to February 2018 and from March 2018 to March 2021.[35]

In 2023, she campaigned for a "yes" vote in the 2023 Australian referendum to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.[36]

In March 2024, Perkins was a guest speaker in a "spotlight session" at the Australian International Documentary Conference.[19] In the same month, she was appointed chair of AFTRS, the first Indigenous filmmaker to be appointed to the position in its 50-year history.[10]

In 2024 she conducts masterclasses for Indigenous screen students at the Centre of Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs.[10]

Recognition and awards

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Personal honours

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  • 2002: Winner Byron Kennedy Award, awarded by the Australian Film Institute, for "for her vast amount and breadth of her work as writer, director, producer, executive producer and instigator across drama, documentary and television; for her dynamism and creativity; for her outstanding ability to inspire others and work collaboratively; and for her passionate championing of Indigenous filmmaking and filmmakers"[37]
  • 2011: Australian International Documentary Conference Stanley Hawes Award, in recognition of her contribution to documentary filmmaking in Australia[38]
  • 2017: Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Dreamtime Awards 2018, in recognition of her contributions film and culture[38]
  • 2018: Featured in Blackwell & Ruth's global project 200 Women: Who Will Change the Way You See the World, which included a book and series of exhibitions around the world[39][2][40]
  • 2023: Finalist, National NAIDOC Awards[38]

Film and TV awards

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Some of the many awards for which her films and TV productions have been nominated or won include:

Personal life

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Perkins has a son with her ex-husband, filmmaker Richard McGrath.[26][47]

She has said that next to filmmaking, music is her other passion.[9]

As of March 2024 she lives in Alice Springs.[10]

Selected filmography

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Footnotes

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  1. ^ Penny McDonald is listed in most credits as producer,[16] but Perkins is listed as line producer.[17]

References

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  1. ^ a b Bagshaw, Eryk (13 November 2013). "Two of us: Rachel and Hetti Perkins". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 20 November 2019. Sisters Rachel Perkins, 44, and Hetti Perkins, 49, are the daughters of renowned Aboriginal activist Charlie Perkins.
  2. ^ a b c d "Rachel Perkins". 200 Women who will change the way you see the world. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  3. ^ "Perkins, Rachel, 1970- [authority record]". AIATSIS. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  4. ^ a b Hands, Tenille (2012). "Perkins, Rachel". Written by Tenille Hands, National Film and Sound Archive; [in] The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in the Twentieth Century [Creative Commons International 4.0]. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
  5. ^ a b Perkins, Rachel (16 November 2019). "Director Rachel Perkins calls for 'end of silence' on Indigenous recognition in ABC Boyer Lecture". Australia: ABC News. Retrieved 20 November 2019. ...an edited extract from the first of Rachel Perkins's Boyer Lectures. Her complete series of lectures, titled The End of Silence, will be broadcast on ABC RN.
  6. ^ "Aboriginal teen 'stoked' after speech". The Age. Melbourne. Australian Associated Press. 25 October 2010. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  7. ^ Dobbie, Phil (6 November 2010). "An Employment Pool of Eager Aussies". CBS MoneyWatch. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  8. ^ Celebrating the Achievements of our Past Students, ACT Government, archived from the original on 30 January 2017, retrieved 31 January 2017
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Perkins, Rachel. "Filmmaker interviews: Rachel Perkins" (Interview). National Film and Sound Archive. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  10. ^ a b c d Morris, Linda (3 April 2024). "Rachel Perkins to chair AFTRS at crucial point for the arts school". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  11. ^ "Rachel Perkins". Australian Film Television and Radio School. 24 March 2023. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  12. ^ a b c "About". Blackfella Films. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  13. ^ "Blood Brothers – Freedom Ride". National Film and Sound Archive. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  14. ^ "Blood Brothers (1993)". Screen Australia. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  15. ^ a b c d e Collins, Felicity (December 2013). "Rachel Perkins: Creating Change Through Blackfella Films". Contemporary Australian Filmmakers (69). Retrieved 27 August 2024 – via Senses of Cinema.
  16. ^ "From Sand to Celluloid". National Film and Sound Archive. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  17. ^ "Short Films of Warwick Thornton, Part 1: Payback (1996)". Aboriginal Art & Culture: an American eye. 8 February 2010. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  18. ^ Cath Lavelle, ed. (November 2001). "One Night the Moon Media kit" (PDF). MusicArtsDance. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2011.
  19. ^ a b c "Rachel Perkins: Truth to Power". AIDC. 22 January 2024. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  20. ^ "SBS Film – Spreading the message by Mary Colbert". 4 May 2009.
  21. ^ "ABC Sydney – What's on This Weekend – SATURDAY 9 May – FILM FESTIVAL". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 11 September 2009.
  22. ^ "Watch Redfern Now: Promise Me". Netflix. 26 November 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  23. ^ Buckmaster, Luke (9 April 2015). "Redfern Now: Promise Me review – final, unsettling showing from a superb cast". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  24. ^ Munro, Kate (28 November 2014). "First Contact producer Rachel Perkins: 'Prejudice often comes from ignorance … people can change'". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  25. ^ a b "Rachel Perkins". Radio National. 30 September 2019. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  26. ^ a b Dow, Steve (28 January 2017). "Rachel Perkins on Jasper Jones and Indigenous activism". The Saturday Paper. Retrieved 28 January 2017.
  27. ^ "Filmmaker Rachel Perkins reveals the truth of The Australian Wars". National Indigenous Television. 24 August 2022. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  28. ^ Payne, Anne Maree; Norman, Heidi (21 September 2022). "In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn't fight back". The Conversation. Retrieved 21 September 2022.
  29. ^ a b "Blackfella Films". Official site. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  30. ^ Turpin, Myfany (2016). "4. Finding Arrernte songs".
  31. ^ Slattery, Claire (18 October 2016). "Foundation launches million-dollar plan to record Australia's songlines". Australia: ABC News. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  32. ^ "A Foundation for all Australians". The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). 14 May 2015. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  33. ^ "Transparency Portal". Transparency Portal. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  34. ^ "Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (Board)". Directory. Australian Government. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  35. ^ "Australian Heritage Council". DCCEEW. 13 March 2012. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  36. ^ Perkins, Rachel (1 October 2023). "Grasp the nettle". The Monthly. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  37. ^ "The Byron Kennedy Award, 1984-2016" (PDF). AACTA. ...is awarded for outstanding creative enterprise within the film and television industries. The Award is given to an individual or organization whose work embodies the qualities of [producer] Byron Kennedy: innovation, vision and the relentless pursuit of excellence
  38. ^ a b c "Rachel Perkins". AustLit. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  39. ^ Blackwell, Geoff; Hobday, Ruth. "200 Women: Book Review". Top Titles. Australian Booksellers Association. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  40. ^ "BMW Group Presents: 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World". BMW Group PressClub. 5 August 2018. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
  41. ^ "Aboriginal Australia : 1994 highlights [Catalogue entry]". AITSIS. Mura Collections Catalogue. Retrieved 20 November 2019. ...covers the Tudawali Film and Video Award. Rachel Perkins' entry 'Freedom Ride' won the award and Rachel discusses the film and using the visual media as a tool to help tell Indigenous stories
  42. ^ "Aboriginal magistrate Pat O'Shane, Archie Roach honoured at Deadly Awards". Australia: ABC News. 10 September 2013. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  43. ^ "All the Awards from Festival des Antipodes". Rencontres Internationales du Cinéma des Antipodes. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  44. ^ Maddox, Garry (6 May 2019). "Sweet Country wins top prize at the Directors Guild Awards". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
  45. ^ Knox, David (7 May 2019). "Australian Director's Guild Awards 2019: winners". TV Tonight. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
  46. ^ "NSW Premier's History Awards". State Library of NSW. 25 March 2020. Retrieved 7 September 2023.
  47. ^ Mengel, Noel. "Hurt and healing voiced". The Courier-Mail.
  48. ^ "Flat". Blackfella Films. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
  49. ^ "Mimi". Blackfella Films. 11 January 2024. Retrieved 27 August 2024.

Further reading

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