Blak Douglas vs The Commonwealth — a documentary

Two Indigenous creators from different continents have combined their talents to create a powerful and personal story of Australia’s shameful racist past and how one man uncovered an uncomfortable truth within his own family.

Blak Douglas vs The Commonwealth is a feature length documentary and  it unravels the story of how Archibald winning artist (2022) Adam Hill (Blak Douglas) overcame his own background’s difficulty with confronting racism and eventually paint a triptych of his grandmother that is revealed at the National Gallery of Australia’s Indigenous Art Triennial: Defying Empire.

“When I was studying at university in Western Sydney an artist encouraged me to explore my Aboriginal ancestry, but being raised in a blue collar, trade, rugby leaguers background in Penrith, it was not something open for men to experience,” Adam Hill (Blak Douglas) said.

“It wasn’t something that the community (then) gave the freedom to of exploring your Aboriginal past.”

The documentary is the work of Cristina Dio, a Uruguayan who had previously worked with Hill on the music documentary Diesel’n’ Dub, a collection of Midnight Oil songs reinterpreted by Declan Kelly.

“Declan Kelly and I commissioned him to do the artwork for the cover, and he also came on tour with the Diesel’n’Dub project playing didgeridoo,” Cristina Dio, director, said.

“It all happened organically when we were shooting interviews back at his place in Redfern where he as working on the triptych and we started to learn about his family history and his grandmother.”

Dio and co-producer and director of photography Rowan du Boisee kept shooting without an agenda until Hill’s grandmother’s story became much more.

“We realised that this is a much bigger story that Adam creating these paintings so we started to explore the aspects of the story and we expanded our coverage,” Dio said.

Hill’s grandmother’s story led the trio and crew to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls in south west New South Wales.

It was here that Hill’s grandmother was snapped from her Kempsey home and taken by the Aboriginal Protection Board as part of a systemic Australia wide policy of removing any semblance of Aboriginal heritage from the girls and turning them into compliant servants for white folks.

This foreboding structure stands as testament to Australia’s racists history that equals American slavey and South African apartheid in its aim to totally erase racial identity.

It’s a powerful moment in the documentary when Hill’s confronts the past of his ancestor as he wanders through the deserted buildings, with the memory of his grandmother ever present.

“It was a confounding and emotional experience because I felt that I was traversing a landscape that was doubly confounding,” Hill said.

“Not only was I walking on land stolen from the original occupants but I was also on a property known for its incarceration of Aboriginal people.

This was an experience also shared by the filmmakers.

“Even now I get shivers and it was harrowing, a feeling of isolation, loneliness and neglect and despair,” Dio said.

“For anyone the fear of the unknown is the worst possible thing, and for these young girls not knowing about their families or not understanding why they were there.”

Intercut with Hill’s journey to Cootamundra is the discovery of photos of his grandmother in the NSW State Archives, which was helped by another film that he had appeared in years earlier, along with the painting process of her portrait.

“The archives invited me and my father in to say that they had information on my grandmother because they has seen the film Between the Lines (Monica Garriga and Esther Lozano, 2007),” Hill said.

Blak Douglas, the painter, is an energetic and totally engaging presence as he takes us through the process from painting the key lines through to the  background seven bands of colour that have become his artistic signature, along with his flat bottomed clouds representing the Commonwealth.

“The seven distinct lines either in my skies or my landscapes are in honour of the seven sisters which is an important Dreaming for most First Nations people, particularly across the bottom half of the continent,” Hill said.

On completion of the works, the film follows Hill taking the paintings to the National Gallery of Australia where he is in full Blak Douglas mode.

To date Blak Douglas vs The Commonwealth has only had a crew screening but Dio is determined that the no-budget project shot with much love will have a future.

“Because it is a truly independent film that wasn’t commissioned or funded, it doesn’t have a direct pathway to TV or cinema, but we are getting good feedback from various film festivals,” Dio said.

“I am really keen for lots of people to see it.”