By Glenn Dunks
It can be so good to see a filmmaker take a significant leap in their talents. Such a thrilling moment to realize that a director isn’t just capable of making good films, but great ones. I must say, I didn’t expect a film like In My Blood It Runs from Maya Newell. The Japanese-Australian filmmaker had previously made the cutely affecting Gayby Baby about the children of same-sex parents (Newell herself is a ‘gayby baby’), but nothing there would suggest a film of such cultural specificity as this.
It’s the sort of film that makes me so glad I watch Australian cinema more regularly than most (including my fellow nationals). I feel like I can easily say it’s one of the best documentaries this country has produced in recent years. A work of emphatic poignancy that speaks so much to this country’s institutionalized racism and its assimilationist ideals to the societal and cultural issues facing Australia’s indigenous populations.
The central figure here is Dujuan Hoosan, a ten-year-old Arrernte boy who struggles at school in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, where classrooms are taught about Captain Cook claiming Australia for Britain. A history for white people, he says. Despite his age, he speaks three languages and understands the nuances of bush food and medicines as well as a more instinctual perception of the power held in those vast landscapes of the Australian outback. He is also a healer and we watch as he performs these health rituals of friends and family. But his grades and rebellious streak mean he is at risk of being taken away from his family, placed in juvenile detention or foster care. He is a boy to whom the traditional education methods mean little, and the film is wise to highlight this struggle and the Australian education system’s inability to handle it.
Despite all of this and while nonetheless confronting tough issues, In My Blood It Runs is not necessarily a tough film to watch. In fact, it probably could have stood to go a little harder; at just 90 minutes long, further exploration of the harsher realities facing those like Dujuan would not have pushed the limits. But Newell’s strengths as a filmmaker is to emphasise tenderness. Dujuan is a healer, after all, and the film presents its issues most predominantly through his point of view. When he speaks of the stolen generation in such innocent terms, it’s impossible to not think of how former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples from the floor of the parliament was just 12 years ago and little appears to have changed except for the paper work.
For American viewers, there will no doubt be correlations between the film and similar issues facing the American education system. Speaking only as a white Australian who was in school over the 1990s and early 2000s, I can see now quite clearly that that early education about the first nation peoples was woefully insufficient and never got particularly better. Rainbow serpents and bush tucker. I don’t know what it is like today, but I would hope that a film like this might make somebody pay attention.
The film was in the early throes of becoming a box office hit in Australian cinemas before COVID closures brought it swiftly to VOD and then local television and streaming. It's unfortunate that more people here and in America (where it received a very limited release) won’t have the benefit of seeing it on a big scree. It's a real shame for many reasons but perhaps most predominantly because it looks beautiful. The dusty browns and flaming oranges of the Australian desert with its clear blue and purple-hued skies—not to mention the evocative use of close-ups throughout—have been elegantly captured by Newell who also acts as cinematographer. But more than any of that, it’s Dujuan and his story. But even if it’s on a television, the dreams of this captivating subject comes through loud and clear.
Release: In My Blood It Runs will air on PBS this Monday the 21st of September as well as online at the network’s POV portal.
Oscar chances: Received a small release earlier in the year at a Oscar-qualifying theatre (the Maysles in NYC, they do good work!) so it should theoretically be eligible. Could be a dark horse. It’s a film that speaks to many relevant issues, but isn’t a lead hammer about it. The branch are certainly not, er, foreign to non-American films lately. It’ll be tough, but a short-listing wouldn’t entirely surprise me if voters actually watch it.