Rachel Perkins (born 1970) is an Indigenous Australian film and television director, producer, and screenwriter. She founded and was co-director of the independent film production company Blackfella Films from 1992 until 2022. Perkins and the company were responsible for producing First Australians (2008), an award-winning documentary series that remains the highest-selling educational title in Australia, and which Perkins regards as her most important work. She directed the films Radiance (1998), One Night the Moon (2001), Bran Nue Dae (2009), the courtroom drama telemovie Mabo (2012), and Jasper Jones (2017). The acclaimed television drama series Redfern Now was made by Blackfella Films, and Perkins directed two episodes as well as the feature-length conclusion to the series, Promise Me (2015).
Perkins' paternal grandmother's people were from Alice Springs, and she wanted to learn more about that side of the family's culture, so, after finishing school in 1988, she applied for a job as a television presenter with the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), mainly to get the airfare to fly there. As she expected, she was not given the job, but they offered her a traineeship at Imparja Television, where she learnt the basics of production, including editing and sound recording.[9][4]
After starting her career as a filmmaker, in the early 1990s she won a scholarship to study production at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in Sydney, where she met and collaborated with Warwick Thornton.[10] She completed the Specialist Extension Course Certificate – Producing in 1995, and also met and became friends with Ivan Sen there.[11]
Career
A few years after beginning her traineeship at CAAMA, aged 21, Perkins became executive producer of the Indigenous unit at SBS Television, the only person in the unit.[9]
Perkins wrote, directed, and co-produced (with Ned Lander) a 55-minute documentary film about her father's 1965 protest bus journey into regional New South Wales, dubbed the "Freedom Ride". The film was called Freedom Ride,[13] and it was part of the 1993 series Blood Brothers, which profiled four prominent Aboriginal men.[14] Perkins said that she travelled with her father to many of the places that the Freedom Ride visited, and it was also a good opportunity to interviewer her father about his early life and get an insight into him and events that she would not otherwise have had access to. She also gained an "understanding of the importance of filmmaking, in terms of capturing Australian cultural history".[9]
Radiance (1998) was her first feature fiction film as a director. She said later that it took a long time to cast the main characters, who included Trisha Morton-Thomas, Rachael Maza, and Deb Mailman, then a newcomer from Brisbane, and that they rehearsed for six weeks.[9]
First Australians was a seven-part documentary series broadcast on SBS Television in 2008. The general manager of SBS Nigel Milan had asked Gordon Briscoe what he could do for Indigenous people, and Briscoe suggested giving them back their history. It was a very ambitious project, and Perkins said that it was the most important thing she would ever work on, "because it really was an opportunity to try and tell the Indigenous story in a comprehensive manner from an Indigenous perspective, over a span of 200 years. It had never been done before".[9] The series took six years to make,[15] and as of 2024[update] remains the highest-selling educational title in Australia.[19]
Bran Nue Dae, a film version of Jimmy Chi's 1990s hit stage musical, was directed by Perkins and released in 2009.[15]
Also in 2012 Perkins directed two episodes of the first series of Redfern Now in 2012: "Stand Up" and "Pretty Boy Blue", the latter dealing with a death-in-custody.[15] She also directed the feature-length conclusion Redfern Now: Promise Me (2015).[22] Luke Buckmaster of The Guardian gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, praising its "superb cast" and saying "the series concludes at the peak of its power".[23]
Perkins executive produced the first series of First Contact (2014), a reality television show which challenged the non-Indigenous participants of Indigenous Australians.[24]
Also in 2014, she finished making the documentary film Black Panther Woman for SBS. The film was nominated for the Documentary Australia Foundation Award for Australian Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival.[25]
She directed the feature fiction film Jasper Jones, released in 2017.[26]
Perkins wrote, directed, presented, and produced the three-part documentary series The Australian Wars which aired on SBS and NITV in September 2022. This series examines the Australian frontier wars fought across the country when British settlers moved in.[27][19][28]
Perkins has said that of all the filmmaking jobs, she likes editing the best, as it is the most creative part. She also said that she feels a great sense of responsibility "to make films or to use media as a vehicle to tell my people's story and to create change".[9]
Darren Dale joined the company in 2000, becoming co-director of the company. The award-winning First Australians, a seven-part documentary series broadcast on SBS Television in 2008, won many awards and was also sold overseas. Miranda Dear, formerly head of drama at ABC Television, was a producer and head of drama at Blackfella from 2010 to 2020.[12] Other productions have included the television film Mabo, the TV series Redfern Now, and many more since.[29] In 2009, Blackfella Films was renting space from Bangarra Dance Theatre in offices overlooking Sydney Harbour.[9]
In 2015, she raised funding for the Arrernte Women's Project, which had been established in 2014, one of the goals of which was to record the traditional songs and associated cultural knowledge of the Arrernte women of Central Australia, to create an archive for future generations.[25][30]
Perkins became president of the AIATSIS Foundation in 2015.[31][32] She was a council member from 17 May 2017 to 16 May 2021,[33] and is deputy chair of AIATSIS board from 1 July 2024 30 September 2024.[34]
In 2019, she was invited to give the ABC's annual Boyer Lecture, which she titled The End of Silence, and broadcast on ABC RN in November and available as a podcast.[5]
Perkins served two terms on the Australian Heritage Council, from February 2015 to February 2018 and from March 2018 to March 2021.[35]
In March 2024, Perkins was a guest speaker in a "spotlight session" at the Australian International Documentary Conference.[19] In the same month, she was appointed chair of AFTRS, the first Indigenous filmmaker to be appointed to the position in its 50-year history.[10]
In 2024 she conducts masterclasses for Indigenous screen students at the Centre of Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs.[10]
Recognition and awards
Personal honours
2002: Winner Byron Kennedy Award, awarded by the Australian Film Institute, for "for her vast amount and breadth of her work as writer, director, producer, executive producer and instigator across drama, documentary and television; for her dynamism and creativity; for her outstanding ability to inspire others and work collaboratively; and for her passionate championing of Indigenous filmmaking and filmmakers"[37]
2018: Featured in Blackwell & Ruth's global project 200 Women: Who Will Change the Way You See the World, which included a book and series of exhibitions around the world[39][2][40]
2001 – Winner, AWGIE Award, Major Award: One Night the Moon (2001)[citation needed]
2001 – Winner, IF Award for Best Direction: One Night the Moon (2001) (nominated)[citation needed]
2001 – Winner, New York International Independent Film & Video Festival, Genre Award Best Feature Film – Musical: One Night the Moon (2001)[citation needed]
^Penny McDonald is listed in most credits as producer,[16] but Perkins is listed as line producer.[17]
References
^ abBagshaw, Eryk (13 November 2013). "Two of us: Rachel and Hetti Perkins". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 20 November 2019. Sisters Rachel Perkins, 44, and Hetti Perkins, 49, are the daughters of renowned Aboriginal activist Charlie Perkins.
^ abcd"Rachel Perkins". 200 Women who will change the way you see the world. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
^ abHands, Tenille (2012). "Perkins, Rachel". Written by Tenille Hands, National Film and Sound Archive; [in] The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in the Twentieth Century [Creative Commons International 4.0]. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
^"A Foundation for all Australians". The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). 14 May 2015. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
^Perkins, Rachel (1 October 2023). "Grasp the nettle". The Monthly. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
^"The Byron Kennedy Award, 1984-2016"(PDF). AACTA. ...is awarded for outstanding creative enterprise within the film and television industries. The Award is given to an individual or organization whose work embodies the qualities of [producer] Byron Kennedy: innovation, vision and the relentless pursuit of excellence
^"Aboriginal Australia : 1994 highlights [Catalogue entry]". AITSIS. Mura Collections Catalogue. Retrieved 20 November 2019. ...covers the Tudawali Film and Video Award. Rachel Perkins' entry 'Freedom Ride' won the award and Rachel discusses the film and using the visual media as a tool to help tell Indigenous stories
