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'In 1955 ‘Jedda’ was released in Australian cinemas and the international film world, starring Indigenous actors Rosalie Kunoth and Robert Tudawali. That year Eric Bell watched the film in the Liberty Cinema in Yass. Twelve years later he was dismayed to read a newly erected plaque in the main street of the Yass Valley village of Bowning. It plainly stated that the Ngunnawal people, on whose country Bowning stood, had been wiped out by an epidemic of influenza. The local Shire Council was responsible for the plaque; they also employed Bell’s father. The Bells were Ngunnawal people.
'The central paradox of 'Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955)' is the enthusiasm of a pastoral community, made wealthy by the occupation of Ngunnawal land, for a film that addressed directly the continuing legacy of settler-colonialism, a legacy that was playing out in their own relationships with the local Ngunnawal people at the time of their investment in the film. While the local council and state government agencies collaborated to minimize the visibility of Indigenous peoples, and the memory of the colonial violence at the heart of European prosperity, a number of wealthy and high-profile members of this pastoral community actively sought involvement in a film that would bring into focus the aftermath of colonial violence, the visibility of its survivors and the tensions inherent in policies of assimilation and segregation that had characterized the treatment of Ngunnawal people in their lifetimes.
'Based on oral histories, documentary evidence, images and film, 'Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955)' explores the themes of colonial nostalgia, national memory and family history. Charles Chauvel’s ‘Jedda’ (1955), a shared artefact of mid-twentieth-century settler-colonialism, is its fulcrum. The book newly locates the story of the genesis of ‘Jedda’ and, in turn, ‘Jedda’ becomes a cultural context and point of reference for the history of race relations it tells.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Table of Contents
Prologue: ‘Jedda’ (1955): Cultural Icon and Shared Artefact of Mid-Twentieth Century Colonialism; 1. Making ‘Jedda’; 2. ‘Hollywood’ in the ‘Fine Wool Hub’; 3. Looking North: Mrs Toby Browne’s Colonial Nostalgia, ‘Jedda’ and the ‘Opening of the Territory’; 4. Memories of ‘Jedda’ after the National Apology; Epilogue: ‘Bogolong’ Memories: The Vagaries of Family History; Index.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Catherine Kevin Combines Family History with Australian Cinema
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 18 no. 4 2021; (p. 900-901)
— Review of Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955) : Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country 2020 multi chapter work criticism'In Dispossession and the Making of Jedda: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country, Catherine Kevin presents an elegant and engaging insight into the social, political and personal terrain upon which Charles Chauvel’s 1955 film Jedda was made. Jedda continues to endure in Australian cultural and intellectual life. The film is remembered as a classic piece of Australian cinema and has received significant attention from scholars of film, gender and race alike. Kevin extends this rich body of literature. Dispossession and the Making of Jedda is at once a detailed account of the film’s production, release and reception, a rigorous examination of how the settler colonial project operates and a powerful encounter with Kevin’s own family’s history. Begun from ‘fragments of family stories’ (4), Kevin has written a book that suggests what it is to understand your family as agents of settler colonialism and how such agency has ‘generated privilege that travelled through the generations and into the present’ (113).' (Introduction)
-
[Review] Dispossession and the Making of Jedda : Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 52 no. 1 2021; (p. 128-130)
— Review of Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955) : Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country 2020 multi chapter work criticism 'Catherine Kevin, the author of Dispossession and the Making of Jedda: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country, tells us that this book was a long time in the making. In some ways, it is a very personal book for Kevin because it emerges from her own white-settler family history in the heart of grazier country in the Yass Valley, where a lucrative wool industry was established on Ngunnawal land. The time and care that Kevin has put into this book is evident in the complex, difficult and evocative story that it tells about colonialism through an account of the making of one of the most historically significant films to address the question of race relations in Australia. As Kevin acknowledges, there are many scholarly analyses of Jedda, notably in Indigenous Studies and Film Studies. But what makes the focus of this book especially arresting is its unearthing of the local, intimate and exploitative economic relationships between white pastoralists and black labourers in the Yass Valley/Ngunnawal country that supported the making of Jedda. Without sizeable investment from wealthy pastoralists in the wool industry, the film would never have been made. ‘The central paradox of this book’, Kevin writes, ‘is the enthusiasm of a pastoral community for a film that directly addressed the continuing legacy of settler-colonialism’ in which the very same pastoral community itself was complicit (1). These were people who benefited from the state policies of racial assimilation and segregation that Jedda had attempted to scrutinise.' (Introduction) -
[Review] Dispossession and the Making of Jedda
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 44 no. 4 2020; (p. 552-553)
— Review of Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955) : Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country 2020 multi chapter work criticism'In Dispossession and the Making of Jedda, Catherine Kevin offers a quietly compelling account of a paradox that defined settler colonialism in mid-20th century Australia: its fascination with Aboriginality at a distance—on screen and in the scenic centre and north of Australia—alongside its inability to see (let alone comprehend) the ongoing dispossession of Aboriginal people close to home. What prompted Kevin to explore this paradox was the casual revelation of a family connection to Charles and Elsa Chauvel, Sydney-based filmmakers who, in 1950, set up a production company with wealthy woolgrowers of the Yass Valley in southern New South Wales. The company would finance and shoot a Technicolor film in the Northern Territory, featuring “magnificent scenery and magnificent aborigine types” (59).' (Introduction)
-
[Review] Dispossession and the Making of Jedda
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 44 no. 4 2020; (p. 552-553)
— Review of Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955) : Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country 2020 multi chapter work criticism'In Dispossession and the Making of Jedda, Catherine Kevin offers a quietly compelling account of a paradox that defined settler colonialism in mid-20th century Australia: its fascination with Aboriginality at a distance—on screen and in the scenic centre and north of Australia—alongside its inability to see (let alone comprehend) the ongoing dispossession of Aboriginal people close to home. What prompted Kevin to explore this paradox was the casual revelation of a family connection to Charles and Elsa Chauvel, Sydney-based filmmakers who, in 1950, set up a production company with wealthy woolgrowers of the Yass Valley in southern New South Wales. The company would finance and shoot a Technicolor film in the Northern Territory, featuring “magnificent scenery and magnificent aborigine types” (59).' (Introduction)
-
[Review] Dispossession and the Making of Jedda : Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 52 no. 1 2021; (p. 128-130)
— Review of Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955) : Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country 2020 multi chapter work criticism 'Catherine Kevin, the author of Dispossession and the Making of Jedda: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country, tells us that this book was a long time in the making. In some ways, it is a very personal book for Kevin because it emerges from her own white-settler family history in the heart of grazier country in the Yass Valley, where a lucrative wool industry was established on Ngunnawal land. The time and care that Kevin has put into this book is evident in the complex, difficult and evocative story that it tells about colonialism through an account of the making of one of the most historically significant films to address the question of race relations in Australia. As Kevin acknowledges, there are many scholarly analyses of Jedda, notably in Indigenous Studies and Film Studies. But what makes the focus of this book especially arresting is its unearthing of the local, intimate and exploitative economic relationships between white pastoralists and black labourers in the Yass Valley/Ngunnawal country that supported the making of Jedda. Without sizeable investment from wealthy pastoralists in the wool industry, the film would never have been made. ‘The central paradox of this book’, Kevin writes, ‘is the enthusiasm of a pastoral community for a film that directly addressed the continuing legacy of settler-colonialism’ in which the very same pastoral community itself was complicit (1). These were people who benefited from the state policies of racial assimilation and segregation that Jedda had attempted to scrutinise.' (Introduction) -
Catherine Kevin Combines Family History with Australian Cinema
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 18 no. 4 2021; (p. 900-901)
— Review of Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955) : Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country 2020 multi chapter work criticism'In Dispossession and the Making of Jedda: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country, Catherine Kevin presents an elegant and engaging insight into the social, political and personal terrain upon which Charles Chauvel’s 1955 film Jedda was made. Jedda continues to endure in Australian cultural and intellectual life. The film is remembered as a classic piece of Australian cinema and has received significant attention from scholars of film, gender and race alike. Kevin extends this rich body of literature. Dispossession and the Making of Jedda is at once a detailed account of the film’s production, release and reception, a rigorous examination of how the settler colonial project operates and a powerful encounter with Kevin’s own family’s history. Begun from ‘fragments of family stories’ (4), Kevin has written a book that suggests what it is to understand your family as agents of settler colonialism and how such agency has ‘generated privilege that travelled through the generations and into the present’ (113).' (Introduction)
