Aus video
The Garrthalala Lipalipa Film JAPANESE VIDEO 日本の映像 Participants The project involved 11 student participants from Garrthalala Homelands School from the Transition to Year 9 class. The project also included strong cooperation from the teachers of the school, Lombinga Mununggurr and Taylor McCormack and the assistant teacher Ganydjira Mununggurr. There were also some members of the Garrthalala community who willingly chose to participate in the project. Verbal and written consent was received from all participants. Commencement of the Project From the commencement of the project, there was ongoing communication and planning with the teachers prior to the on-site work. Ideas were shared for the filmed storytelling process as well as discussions with students about possible stories they would like to share. We prepared resources to scaffold and support the students during the filming process. These included storyboards to support students with the process for storytelling as well as visuals to assist students in thinking of what they’d like to share. Prior to the onsite work, we hired the filming equipment in preparation to begin the 4 day on-site project work at Garrthalala Homelands School. Day 1 Upon arriving at Garrthalala Homelands School, we were introduced to all the students, in which we were able to meet them and understand their interests, as well as establish a rapport. We discussed and shared story ideas with the students. It was a very exciting process as we got an insight into the different ideas students had to share. Students then decided that they would like to tell the Lipalipa canoe story. We introduced the storyboarding process in which students were to include the sequence of the story, what the story is about, who is in it and what filming equipment will be used. Visual materials were provided to students to help support those who needed ideas or those who wanted to expand on their ideas. From there, we formed three production teams. The first team focused on how to make a Lipalipa canoe. The second team focused on interviewing the community members about the Lipalipa story and song while the third team focused on the Lipalipa dance. Within these teams, each student had a key role in their group. They also helped each other at each stage of the project. Finally, all students learned how to use the filming equipment. They were all very eager to get started! Day 2 The filming officially began. On day 2, students began filming out in the bush taking the materials to make a Lipalipa. This included removing bark from a tree with an axe. Students then began making Lipalipa. Some students also made clay today, ready to be used the next day for face and body paint for performing the Lipalipa dance. Students also started collecting and preparing sticks from the bush so that they could be used within the dance. On this day, students also rehearsed the dance! Day 3 By day 3, the project was well underway. One of the production teams began filming the interview with two community members. One interview was about the Lipalipa story while the other interview was about the Lipalipa song. Filming included recording the singing of the Lipalipa song with clap sticks and accompanied by didgeridoo playing. Students also began painting the clay on their face and body. They performed and recorded the Lipalipa dance. It was fantastic! With the assistance from the Indigenous teacher and assistant teacher, we started translating and transcribing key aspects of the film’s storyline; from Yolngu Matha to English. Day 4 Day 4 was our last day onsite for the project. We finished translating and transcribing key aspects of the film story line from Yolngu Matha to English with the support from the Indigenous teacher and assistant teacher. Throughout the process of the project in Garrthalala, a translanguaging approach was used whereby students and teachers used language according to their needs, purpose, and audience. The students moved between Yolngu Matha and English at various times to discuss their ideas for the story, to plan the story stages, and to communicate with others and their choice of language reflected who they were communicating with. The language used throughout the film was Yolngu Matha as this is the language of the community and the students’ home language and strongest language, as well as the language that is tied to the culture and the stories. Therefore, it made sense that the film would be in Yolngu Matha. Subtitles have been created in both English and Japanese to expand the reach of the story beyond the Garrthalala community whilst still providing the authentic experience of hearing Yolngu Matha for the audience. Post Production Work After completing the on-site filmed storytelling process, it was time to edit the film. The Kochi University (Japanese, English major) students translated the Garrthalala film from English to Japanese for the purpose of creating film subtitles. The films and the project website were then shared between Garrthalala Australia and Kochi Japan. Garrthalala Context What a journey to Garrthalala. We flew from Melbourne to Cairns and then onto Gove where we had a short drive to the town of Nhulunbuy. Due to being the wet season there were concerns about whether the small planes would be able to fly in and out of the Homelands communities in the wet weather, so it was therefore decided that we’d travel out to Garrthalala from Nhulunbuy by 4WD. It was a 2 ½ hour journey on very bumpy, muddy and rough dirt roads. Getting bogged twice in the mud and needing to be winched out by a local ranger who is a member of the Garrthalala community provides some insight into the level of difficulty in travel, particularly during the wet season, and to the remoteness of the location. The wallabies and dingoes we saw along the way added to that. At the end of our long journey, the bushy dirt road we’d been travelling along suddenly opened up to a large, cleared dirt area and there
Japan video
Japanese Video The Kagami-mura Tachi-Odori Film AUSTRALIAN VIDEO オーストラリアの映像 The project follows eight Grade 6 students from Kagami Primary School as they prepare for their annual community Tachi-Odori dance festival. Legend has it that the dance dates back to the Heian Period and tells a story dedicated to peace that is nearly a thousand years old. The project included strong cooperation from the staff and teachers at Kagami Primary School, as well as community members who made regular visits to the school to teach the traditional dance to students. Permission was granted from Kagami Primary School to be a part of this school-community event from the early practice sessions through to the final dance performance at the annual Tachi-Odori festival. We were graciously included at all stages as we learned about the Tachi-Odori story through the eyes of students, teachers, parents, and community elders. The school kindly allowed us to have school visits, and offered solutions to managing the project against restraints caused by the pandemic. On-site work was done during the three months leading up to the Tachi-Odori Festival, which is held annually on November 3, the Culture Day national holiday in Japan. About Kagami Kagami is a mountain village nestled just to the north of Kochi City in Kochi, Japan. The Tachi-Odori festival has been held in this small hamlet for nearly a thousand years. It is a festival which represents the enduring bond between schools and communities in rural Japan. The Daichi Shin-gu Shrine where the dance festival takes place was built in 1481. During the 20th century the Tachi-Odori dance was proudly performed all around Japan, and it remains a signature cultural event for the community which, like most rural areas in Japan, is battling against a rapidly aging and declining population. With its focus on having elder community members visit the school to teach the dance to primary school students to keep this long tradition alive, the Tachi-Odori dance festival offers a splendid example of how local culture can be preserved through the nexus of school and community. Practitioner Reflections What an honor it has been to be involved in an international project documenting the school-community bond through the eyes of primary students. Celebrating the student experience through filmed stories is a powerful way to share local representations of language and culture on an international scale. The resulting film outcome and this website resource linking two communities and their exceptional stories marks the conclusion to a team project that has been in the works for a few years. It is a wonderful end-product that reminds us, emphatically, of the power of international collaboration, the enduring strength of local community traditions, and the crucial role that schools and communities play together in nurturing children. But the resulting Tachi-Odori film is only part of our Kagami story. The real story, the ‘banashi’ in this Community Banashi project, lies in the process… There are any number of challenges that come along with such projects – logistical, technological, bureaucratic, financial, cultural, linguistic, and more. These all paled in comparison to our biggest challenge – whether we would have a story at all! The year in which this film project took place was Year 3 of the pandemic. The Tachi-Odori festival had already been paused for two years and Kochi people were still jittery about any kind of public gathering after the seventh covid wave hit us hard in the summer of 2022. There was a real danger of the festival being cancelled this year as well, right in the middle of the Community Banashi story we had settled on as our contribution to this international project. Beyond our own worries about having an actual Community Banashi story to share with our Australian counterparts, the students who were doing all the work in making this film happen had even bigger worries. Would they get the chance to show off all their hard work and practice by performing the traditional Tachi-Odori dance at the shrine like generations of students before them? Or would all their effort result in yet another cancellation and a lost chance to continue this beloved local tradition? The dance is traditionally performed by the Grade 4 class each year, but an exception was required during these exceptional times. For this story, the Grade 6 class at Kagami Primary School, a small group of eight students who had missed their chance in 2020 and 2021, would be given the opportunity to perform an annual community rite of passage they had missed as Grade 4 students. With no festival since November 2019, this was the last chance for the graduating Grade 6 class to have their community moment. Or would they…? When filming started during the classroom practice sessions in September, neither the school nor the community could confirm that the climactic Tachi-Odori festival would even take place. We were warned in advance and throughout our school visits that a cancellation could happen at any moment leaving students without the chance to proudly perform, and leaving us without an ending to our envisioned film story. But as we nervously neared the Tachi-Odori festival date in early November, and as students honed their rhythmic dance performance to perfection under the careful guidance of the community instructors, we all started to realise that there would indeed be an actual completed story. The Tachi-Odori festival was given the ‘go sign’ in October thanks to a local ebb in the number of covid cases. On the day of the festival, we couldn’t have asked for better Culture Day weather! On a glorious November 3rd morning, we all met at a community center near the shrine where the Tachi-Odori festival would take place. Students, their parents, teachers, community instructors, and observers like us gathered to watch the final preparations as students slipped into their costumes and hand-crafted straw shoes, and were given last-minute instructions before the long climb up to the beautiful Daichi Shin-gu mountain shrine. Awaiting them at the shrine were a