Three Short Films by the Karrabing Collective

Wutharr, Saltwater Dreams (2016)
Night Time Go (2017)
Day in the Life (2020)

Bringing together Aboriginal filmmakers from Australia’s Northern Territory, The Karrabing Film Collective uses the creation of film and art installations as a form of Indigenous grassroots resistance and self-organization.

The collective opens a space beyond binaries of the fictional and the documentary, the past and the present. Meaning “low tide” in the Emmiyengal language, karrabing refers to a form of collectivity outside of government-imposed strictures of clanship or land ownership. Shot on handheld cameras and phones, Karrabing’s films dramatize and satirize the daily scenarios and obstacles that the collective’s members face in their various interactions with corporate and state entities.

Composing webs of nonlinear narratives that touch on cultural memory, place, and ancestry by freely jumping in time and place, KFC exposes and intervenes in the longstanding facets of colonial violence that impact members directly, such as environmental devastation, land restrictions, and economic exploitation.