• Home
  • About
    • Nomad Films
    • Helen Newman
  • News
  • TASTING PLATE
  • Projects
    • Documentary
    • Theatre
    • Projection
    • Adverts/explainers/everything else
  • Stills
    • Treasured
    • Understorey
    • Projection stills
    • Apna Ghar, India
    • Living On Landfill
    • Timor-Leste
    • Cambodia's Daughters
    • VR DOCO - GUWAYU
    • LONG TABLE
    • DownPour - A4 Circus Ensemble
    • Flying Fruit Fly Circus
    • Creating a New Normal - After Black Saturday
  • Feedback
    • Client Feedback
    • Viewer Feedback
  • Links
  • Contact

Nomad Films

  • Home
  • About
    • Nomad Films
    • Helen Newman
  • News
  • TASTING PLATE
  • Projects
    • Documentary
    • Theatre
    • Projection
    • Adverts/explainers/everything else
  • Stills
    • Treasured
    • Understorey
    • Projection stills
    • Apna Ghar, India
    • Living On Landfill
    • Timor-Leste
    • Cambodia's Daughters
    • VR DOCO - GUWAYU
    • LONG TABLE
    • DownPour - A4 Circus Ensemble
    • Flying Fruit Fly Circus
    • Creating a New Normal - After Black Saturday
  • Feedback
    • Client Feedback
    • Viewer Feedback
  • Links
  • Contact
  • Menu

An Australian/Afghan Wedding - excerpt from feature documentary ANTHEM.

September 6, 2015

An excerpt from feature documentary, ANTHEM. This is an age old story of two people in love. Dallas, an Australian law student married Zabi, an Afghan refugee in the backyard of Kate Durham and Julian Burnside QC. Just months before Julian had been in the High Court fighting for Zabi's right to seek asylum in Australia during the infamous Tampa court hearings. At the same time Zabi was being held, with hundreds of others, on a freighter at sea. Innocent victims of domestic politics. 
This simple moment of two people declaring their love for one another sweeps aside all the fear mongering and falsehoods. This is what is actually possible.
Over the years of filming Anthem we were invited us into so many heart-filled, private moments - it was humbling to take the journey with so many heroic people.

← From the Ground UPSIEV X excerpt from feature documentary ANTHEM. →

A sidebar of those who inspire...


'Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage'

- Anais Nin

Over the years I've been filming I've had plenty of moments to ponder the truthfulness of this simple quote by Anais Nin - a woman who lived passionately and with courage.

Regularly I film people of courage but not always do I see their lives expanding, at least in a physical sense. However, I think this is where the courage lives - in the lives of people who, facing incredible odds, continue to create community, share resources, laugh at stupidness, and love with honesty.

It is always humbling to be welcomed in the lives of courageous people. 


Lou

Lou and Helen adjusted.jpg

Many moons ago the universe gave Lou to me. Little did I know at the time she was to become my life long friend, source of endless inspiration, wise mentor, adopted mother, daughter and sister.  Lou is an internationally respected authority on the difficult subject of Intimate Partner Sexual Violence (IPSV) and her amazing work can be viewed via her website


Laughter...

Poke tongue out adjusted.jpg

This little girl seemed to excel in pulling the best faces that would crack me up while I was filming workers on the Mae Sot rubbish dump on the Thai/Burma border. Filming lives that are so vulnerable and exposed often leaves me feeling like a cheap voyeur. It was good to sometimes put the camera aside and just pull faces together.  


Asylum Seeker Resource Centre

ASRC-Logo-Colour.jpg

When I first became involved in filming refugee stories the ASRC was a place where I saw the perfect mix of head and heart in responding to refugee needs. Founder, Kon Karapanagiotidis was, and still is, a power house of vision and inspiration. Since 2001 the ASRC has grown to be Australia’s largest asylum seeker organisation delivering services to over 1,200 asylum seekers at any one time through programs such as material aid, health, legal, counselling, casework and foodbank.