Spectres of the Past: Necropolitics and Colonial Trauma in 'Dark Place'

The five short films that make up Dark Place portray, in myriad and masterful ways, the ongoing ramifications of colonial dispossession and disempowerment on Australia's First Nations peoples. By utilising the tropes and motifs of the horror genre, they offer viewers a visceral understanding of how danger and distress have become embedded in the Indigenous imaginary since the arrival of Europeans, writes Tristen Harwood.

Additional keywords:
Kodie Bedford, Liam Phillips, Rob Braslin, Perun Bonser, Bjorn Stewart, Achille Mbembe, necropolitics, Michel Foucault, comedy, Aboriginal, Brendan Hokowhitu, colonisation, Judith Butler, Adam Lowenstein, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, Orientalism, Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy, Tracey Moffatt