RABBIT-PROOF FENCE Q&A with director PHILLIP NOYCE Movie Interview by Toby White © 2005 PHASE9 ENTERTAINMENT

Following a preview screening of RABBIT-PROOF FENCE, PHASE9 met the film’s director, Phillip Noyce at the Dorchester Hotel in London. I would have imagined the biggest thought when you started was you’ve got to find the right kids? You got it. What happens is that you start a movie and there are always problems but you tell yourself you’ll solve all of them. And usually you believe it. In this case, I have to admit that I didn’t think that I would solve it because how would you ever find 3 children that could be in that movie. Particularly the eldest since she had so much to do. What was the search process like? I understand there was a national talent search… Yeah, we tried to turn it into one. We used the Morning Show on Channel 9, the leading Commercial network in Australia, to launch the search for a star. But we still had to do most of the work with people sending in tapes and we had to go and see all these kids, most of the better ones coming from remote areas! The story being such as it is, you must have been very careful or did you think that it was just a narrative? No, we did have to be careful about cultural issues and the presentation of certain events. We were as careful as we could be, consulting people along the way and having elders from that area with us during filming. As you were shooting it, with low camera angles, certain noises, were you trying to send the audience on a particular emotional arc? Well, you want to try to get the audience to identify with the characters so the use of point of view shots was an attempt to make the audience to feel that they are those kids and to know what it might be like to be in that situation. As for the loud noises, they happen mainly in the first part when they are taken to the camp, by truck and train and that’s what it would have been like for them. I remember Molly and Daisy telling me even now that they were frightened and disorientated and feeling ill from fear. Growing up in Australia as you did, were you aware of what the practice towards Aborigines was? Yes and no. I grew up in a small country town and we had, like many country towns, a reservation outside the town. About fifteen miles out was a big fence and inside the fence in huts lived the Aboriginal inhabitants of that area who had been herded “for their own protection”. Once you think about it, clearly they’d been locked up. Growing up in Australia, this seemed normal. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I realised that this was far from normal. You start to think, “How come those people are living out there?” With regard to the stolen generations, no, I didn’t know about it. Nobody did really. Most of the country only realised in 1997 when the results of a judicial enquiry were issued in what was called the Bringing Them Home report and that’s when the term “stolen generations” came into general usage. As an Australian, what did you personally learn about yourself working on this film? I learned that we could blame the English for everything once again. [Laughter] No, I learned that the Neville character is our grandfather and, in a way, the film is an attempt to come to terms with what happened and to make it explicable to myself and to everyone else in Australia. The most interesting thing that I learned was that I didn’t understand the dependency on extended family inherent in Aboriginal society. I didn’t realise how kinship extends beyond blood lines therefore if you have a policy of removing children from their families we were utterly attacking the heart of their society which is why the judge in that enquiry said that this was equivalent to genocide. Continued on page 2

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