Wrong Side of the Road

Ned Lander | Australia 1981 | 79 min

Port Adelaide to Point Pearce. Cars, cops, cattle stations and driving rock and reggae. Two days in the lives of Aboriginal bands, "Us Mob" and "No Fixed Address".

The film opens with scenes of police breaking up a performance of the two groups, arresting a band member and his subsequent escape from a police vehicle. It continues with run-ins between the musicians and the establishment.

The racism encounted when the bands turn up at a gig and the white hotel manager discovers they are black, the insensitivity of the police and bureaucrats, and the difficulties in tracing one's family after being adopted out ("Stolen Generations" issue), reflect the problems encounted by many urban Aboriginal people. "Wrong Side of the Road" reveals the injustices Aboriginal people constantly face. (The Aboriginal, Message Stick)

The thread that runs through the film is the story played by Les Graham in the film, of a boy looking for his mother. We constructed the script out of life stories that we recorded from members of the bands, and people around the bands and at the Center [for Aboriginal Studies in Music].

They weren't necessarily playing themselves — Les was in fact playing someone else's story in the film.

But if you look today — here in 2000 twenty years later — at the significance of the Stolen Generation and the way that that has become part of the whole public debate — it wasn't in those days, but that's what that story was about. It was about a kid who had been taken away from his family, and in fact right through the seventies that was still happening.

There was many ways that those sort of situations came about, obviously there were instances of kids being forcibly removed from parents, and also instances of kids being removed for a whole range of other reasons. But always with the same consequence, which was the fragmentation of family, and the dislocation of family, and of kids trying to reconnect with both their blood family and their broader community. (Ned Lander in an interview with The Aboriginal)

Cast	Ronnie Ansell Peter Butler Franco Carli Sam Cohen John Francis Donald Freshwater Leslie Graham Ken Hampton Jr. Chris Haywood Christian Jocumsen Chris Jones Edward Love Frank Malony Wally McArthur Rob McGregor John Miller Emu Nugent Noel Pommery Phillip Rehn Richard Shoesmith Mark Thompson Craig Tidswell Bart Willoughby Ronnie Pedro City policeman Country policeman City policeman Roadie Les Stevens Roadie Country policeman City policeman Ricky Roadie City policeman Wally City policeman John John Country policeman policeman Country policeman City policeman City policeman City policeman Bart
Release dates	1981 - Australia
Video/DVD Release Date	1983
Awards	1981 - Jury Prize at the AFI Awards
Rating	M15+ (some PG)
Language level	not available
Distributor	Ronin Films
Soundtrack	No Fixed Address, Us Mob
Genre	Drama
Notes	One of the first major feature films about urban Aboriginal culture. The film is the first Australian initiative to chronicle the experiences of Aboriginals from their own perspective. Ned Lander was the producer of Radiance.
Find this movie	Indigenous film suppliers and distributors

Where to from here?

• Aboriginal music overview
• Learn how racism towards Aboriginal people is still a problem today
• Read how the Stolen Generations affect Aboriginal people's lives