Kwatye

Trisha Morton-Thomas
Australia 2007
5 min

A man wakes up hungover on the sofa from his previous night. Unwilling to move he lets his wife pick up the remote control and his 3-year-old daughter get him a glass of water with an aspirin.

It's the girl's birthday, yet the father seems to be oblivious of joining his wife's birthday preparations. The girl resorts herself to a special form of revenge. When the father is sick of her bringing him glass after glass of water he inquires where that water came from because it has a strange taste attached to it.

The revelation made the theatre roar in laughter...

Cast	Aspen Beattie Carmen Glynn-Braun Donnovan Mears Aspen (little girl) Karen (mother) Gary (father)
Release dates	May 5, 2007 - Australia (World premiere on the Message Sticks Indigenous Film Festival)
Video/DVD Release Date	2007, Bit of Black Business
Awards	not available
Rating	PG - Parental guidance recommended
Language level	medium
Distributor	Flickerfest
Soundtrack	Drapht
Genre	Comedy
Notes	Kwatye is based on a family story and was shot in Alice Springs. 'Kwatye' is an an Aranda (central Australian Aboriginal language group) word for water within the Great Artesian Basin. Trisha Morton-Thomas is a Anmatjerre (pronounced: an-mut-jerra) woman from central Australia. She's been a producer, actor (e.g. Radiance), director and journalist/writer.

"I got the idea for the film from a story my cousin told me. She had been sick with the flu and her two-year-old daughter kept bringing water into the room for her to drink. After a while my cousin called out to her mother to stop giving the baby glasses of water and then she got a nasty surprise. When I wrote Kwatye I decided to use a young couple in their late teens/early twenties, struggling to maintain their relationship and raise their child, because I don't believe there are enough stories in the Aboriginal community about this age group. I want the audience to think about the pressures young parents are under, and to realise that even though these young people have a child of their own, they are still children themselves and are doing the best they can."
— Trisha Morton-Thomas (source: programs.sbs.com.au)