Island Home Country

DVD plus study guide
Year: 2008
Classification: Exempt
Runtime: 52 min
Produced In: Australia
Directed By: Jeni Thornley
Language: English

'I am white, born on a stolen island. This is my story of a journey.'

Island Home Country is a one-hour documentary about Australia's colonised history and how it impacts into the present. The filmmaker, a descendant of convicts transported to Australia in 1788, goes on a journey to understand the disturbing history of colonial Tasmania, repressed during her own 1950s childhood there. Filming with family, newcomer Australians and First Australians she explores her personal responsibility as a 'newcomer' Australian to the First Australians and to 'country.' The film's six chapters: Amnesia, Possession, Memory, Mourning, Encounter and Reckoning document the filmmaker's own personal reckoning with history and introduce other individuals who share their own process of working through issues around colonisation. Island Home Country is a timely document in the historic moment of the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations.

Island Home Country is working with protocols in Respecting Cultures: Working with Tasmanian Aboriginal Community and Aboriginal Artists, Arts Tasmania's Aboriginal Advisory Committee.

A cathartic retelling and analysis of personal memories and collective histories in the film's movement from past to present and back again, as Thornley seeks a resolution to the ongoing ethical dilemma surrounding the occupation of Aboriginal lands.

– Christine Peacock, Colourise, Brisbane International Film Festival Program, 2008.

Island Home Country offers hope for refiguring our damaging and exploitative relationships with the environment, by learning from Indigenous notions of country and by making a genuine approach towards meaningful reparation and reconciliation.

– Kate Raynor, ATOM Study Guide, 2008.