Feb. 24, 2004 - 1:51 pm
in addition to working on seeing important Oscar nominees, I'm also working on seeing movies that are related to Australia. i thought it was time that i saw this one. i'll probably be watching another one this evening. i've got one checked out.
this is another true-story-turned-movie about a policy in Western Australia in the 1930s that had the government remove all "half caste" or mixed white and aboriginal children away from their families and move them to a camp so that they could learn to be servants for white people. the film follows a particular set of three girls who are taken from their mother and later escape to begin a 1200 mile trek back to their home. they are constantly being tracked and must escape the police as well as an aboriginal tracker who seems to have a sixth sense about where they are.
in case you don't know, there actually was a rabbit-proof fence in Western Australia that ran from the northern coast to the southern coast of the continent. the girls helped use this to guide them home since they actually lived just beside the fence in their hometown. you can also see how the fence is a metaphoric barrier that is keeping the whites and the aboriginals separate just as it is meant to keep the rabbits on one side and the farmland on the other.
it's an interesting film and definitely worth watching if you're learning about aussie history as i am at the moment.