Close to the Bone

Streaming video - 2022

In September 1852, in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, the mutilated body of 16-year-old shepherd, James Brown, was found. The next day, a reprisal party of 17 men killed a disputed number of First Nations people. 170 years later, descendants of James Brown’s family return to the Flinders Ranges and reach out to people from some of the Aboriginal groups and share memories of the traumatic early period of European invasion. What happens when stories of violence and conquest on Australia’s colonial frontier are more than just an historical abstraction, with powerful and personal meanings for families and individuals on both sides of the inter-cultural frontier? Can the scars of past atrocities be reconciled and healed through the act ...of truth-telling? CLOSE TO THE BONE is a practical exercise in ‘truth and reconciliation,’ engaging with culturally and politically challenging material, in an effort to forge shared understandings. The film reveals diverse understandings of historic events, while seeking to resolve a shared path forward. In doing so, the film is informed by Charlie Perkins’ words: ‘We know we cannot live in the past, but the past lives in us.’ more