Hyphen is marking Reconciliation Week 2023 with a community film screening of Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow. The film is a love story told in song and spoken word from the points of view of Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter — First Nations singer-songwriters and icons of Australian music.
Archie and Ruby are loved and revered but their road to self-expression and success was not an easy one. In 2004, Hunter and Roach, at the peak of their artistic power, created with Paul Grabowsky and the Australian Art Orchestra, Kura Tungar: Songs from the River in which they told their life stories.
A legendary concert, staged when the Australian government had not yet apologised to the Stolen Generations, was filmed by filmmaker Philippa Bateman and is regarded as a powerful act of reconciliation through the artistic collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists.
Now, 17 years later, Hunter and Roach’s profoundly moving experiences—about being stolen as children, finding each other as teenagers while searching for the families they had been forcibly removed from, recovering from alcoholism and returning to their majestic lands—comes to the screen in a cinematic celebration of love, survival and triumph.
RSVP to help us plan but drop-ins are welcome.
Rated PG. PG-rated content is not recommended for viewing by people under the age of 15 without guidance from parents, teachers or guardians.
This film screening is a part of Wodonga Council’s Reconciliation Week program.
The theme for National Reconciliation Week 2023, Be a Voice for Generations, encourages all Australians to be a voice for reconciliation in tangible ways in our everyday lives – where we live, work and socialise. For the work of generations past, and the benefit of generations future, let’s choose to create a more just, equitable and reconciled country for all.