Rabbit Proof Fence
Film Club

Riverbank Arts Centre Newbridge
Thursday 4 December
8.00pm (Tickets €4 plus membership)
Booking 045 448333
boxoffice@riverbank.ie

Based on actual experiences, this film (winner of many awards) centres on the 1931 journey by three girls of Aboriginal mothers and white fathers who fled from the repressive life of the Moore River Native Settlement in Western Australia,
At a time when the Assimilationist Australian government policy was to train aboriginal children as domestic workers and integrate them into white society, young Molly Craig decides to lead her little sister and cousin in a daring escape from their internment camp. With grit and determination Molly guides the girls on an epic journey, one step ahead of a native tracker and the regional constabulary, over 1,500 miles of Australia's outback in search of the rabbit-proof fence that bisects the continent and will lead them home. These three girls are part of what is referred to today as the 'Stolen Generations.'

This is an epic journey across an unforgiving landscape that will test their very will to survive. Their only resources are tenacity, determination, ingenuity and each other. Their one hope, find the rabbit-proof fence that might just guide them home. Their pursuers take orders from the government's ‘chief protector of Aborigines,’ A.O. Neville, blinded by Anglo-Christian certainty and conventional wisdom. Can the girls survive?

Their story was first told in the book, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, written by Molly’s daughter, Doris Pilkington, and published by the University of Queensland Press in 1996. It might never have attracted anything more than local attention had it not been for Christine Olsen, who convinced Doris to let her write a screenplay of the book. She also managed to convince Australian Philip Noyce to direct it. Noyce, although brought up in Australia, had been working in Hollywood for many years, directing such hit movies as Clear and Present Danger. "I no longer knew what it was like to feel Australian," he remarked, on the conclusion of filming, "but then along came this story."

For further information, please contact Catríona on (045) 448314/5
or by e-mail at artscentre@riverbank.ie