Please join us for a screening of Refugium (2021), a short film exploring themes of climate justice, colonial disruption, apocalypse and intergenerational justice followed by a Q&A with Claire G Coleman, Jen Rae, Rebecca Mayo, Pia van Gelder.

Time: arrive at 5.30pm for 6pm screening, finishing approximately 7.30pm
Date: Tuesday 11 June
Location: Theatrette 2.02, Sir Roland Wilson Building, 120 McCoy Circuit, Canberra 2600
Film duration: 26 minutes
Access: Closed captioned and Auslan interpretation version available upon request.

Refugium, 2021, is a short film of speculative fiction that led to the formation of the actual Centre for Reworlding. It was the winner of the Incinerator Gallery Award for Social Change in 2021 and selected for Melbourne Now 2023 part of the NGV X Recess: Artist Film Program.

‘Refugium’ literally means ‘place of refuge’ in Latin, and is a term used in biology to describe an area in which a population of organisms can survive through a period of unfavourable or volatile environmental conditions. It must adapt its systems and processes to survive. In the film, which is set between 2021 through 2121, Coleman and Rae patch through calls from the future through the BILYA portal to warn of an upcoming climate apocalypse. Refugium hacks time and compounding existential crises, delves into moral dilemmas of life and death and hones in on child-centred trauma prevention and intergenerational justice in the climate emergency.

This transtemporal work of speculative fiction implicitly addresses the audience to consider the present climate emergency as a state of apocalypse. It asks: How would the world have been prior to colonial disruption? What would a world centred by First Nations knowledge and protocols look like? What skills and knowledges that future generations of First Nations may need for survival are at the thresholds of being forever lost, overlooked or undervalued?

Commissioned by Arts House for ‘Refuge: 2021’.
Winner, Incinerator Art Award for Social Change (2021)
Selected for Melbourne Now 2023 part of the NGV X Recess: Artist Film Program

Warning for film: 18+ Contains distressing themes, contains profanity and discussing the climate emergency, apocalypse, euthanasia, gender violence, suicide and filicide, and might be distressing. While the film discusses such difficult themes, the artists view the work as hopeful – a ’blunt force to break the inertia of inaction on climate’ by centring intergenerational justice and Indigenous knowledge systems.

Acknowledgement of Country
REFUGIUM was created on the unceded lands of the Wurrundjeri Peoples of the Kulin Nations. The Centre for Reworlding pays our deepest respects to their Ancestors and Elders past and present, and acknowledge their enduring legacy of care for Country so we may enjoy the stars, drink from the waters and continue to learn from the land. We are committed to strengthening relationships between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples for the benefit of future generations to thrive in restored ecosystems.