A Northern Town

Rachel Landers | Australia 2008 | 75/52 min

A Northern Town is the story of racism in Kempsey, a town in New South Wales. This powerful documentary explores the troubled history of the town, from a horrific massacre of Aboriginal people in 1838, to the brutal Kinchela Aboriginal boys' home—where many of the boys, snatched from their families, were abused and raped.

At its core are the testimonies of the residents of the Booroongen nursing home, where old Aboriginal activists live side by side with old white racists, recalling lives blighted by poverty, mental illness, suicide and violence. Aboriginal-owned and run, the home has a mix of both races - although Indigenous people still have a life expectancy 17 years shorter than their white peers.

Interviews with Kempsey inhabitants testify to the ongoing racial tensions—to abiding stereotypes and ongoing segregation, but also the scars of the Stolen Generations and the indignity of being barred from buses, cinemas and swimming pools solely because of the colour of their skin.

Landers weaves recollections of white suffering in times of war, flood and depression through the Aboriginal people's accounts, leaving the viewer caught between two banks in a river of sadness, pain and loss.

The more I researched, Kempsey became a kind of ground zero for all that had occurred between black and white Australia from settlement onwards.—Rachel Landers about A Northern Town

Cast	Dunghutti man John Gurri Kelly and others
Release dates	not available
Video/DVD Release Date	not available
Awards	AFI award for cinematography
Rating	not available
Language level	not available
Distributor	www.ponyfilms.com.au
Soundtrack	Benjamin Speed
Genre	Documentary
Notes	Rachel Landers describes the Kinchela Boys home near Kempsey which housed Aboriginal boys forcibly removed from their families as "a place of sadistic horrors—rapes and murders". A Northern Town was shot over five months on location in Kempsey.
Find this movie	Indigenous film suppliers and distributors

The historical society said they thought we should be ashamed of ourselves as they had thought we were doing a 'straight' i.e non-Indigenous history of the town.—Rachel Landers

Where to from here?

• More about the Stolen Generations
• Explore the Stolen Generations timeline
• Read about the Prime Minister's Sorry apology to the Stolen Generations