Seventh Cinema: Two Laws

Two Laws (1982) 2h 10m. Directed by the Borroloola Community, Alessandro Cavadini and Carolyn Strachan.

White people don't understand that there are two laws. White people have different laws from Aboriginal people. TWO LAWS is a film about history, law and life in the community of Borroloola in far North Queensland. The films offers viewers a remarkable and different way of seeing and hearing. Like the film BACKROADS it is one of the few productions at that time in which Aboriginal people had creative input. The impetus for TWO LAWS came from the community themselves. There was substantial collaboration with the film makers before and during the shooting period. It is one of the most outstanding films to be made during the 1980s. It is a historical analysis of what, nearly forty years later, is an increasingly contemporary question. Two Laws.

Concerning Violence 

We are pleased that Seventh Cinema is back for a second season! 

This year's curated film program is anchored in Martinican psychiatrist and anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon’s often-misunderstood and overly read essay Concerning Violence from his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth. For this season, we have curated films that engage with Fanon’s work in the spirit he intended - not as an endorsement of violent action, but as a confrontation of the processes that drive the colonised to employ violence. This season includes seminal films such as The Battle of Algiers, one of cinema’s great political masterpieces, which charts the Algerian national liberation movement from its beginnings in 1954 through to independence in 1962. Also featured is Embrace of the Serpent, a visually stunning work filmed on 35mm in the Amazon, set against the violent backdrop of the colonial rubber trade. Dulce Fernandes' film essay Tales of Oblivion by offers a meditative reflection on the physical and cultural remnants of colonial atrocities in our present landscapes  - a 15th-century landfill turned car park and mini golf course, museum artefacts - capturing the haunting echoes of the horrific trade in human beings. 

We welcome you to join us in viewing these important films and reflecting on their profound relevance to the present. This season invites a critical examination of colonialism within our local context and the atrocities unfolding further afield. In engaging with Fanon’s work, we are called to consider the responsibilities of Western intellectuals and nations in perpetuating or dismantling colonial systems. Most importantly, these films challenge us to ask: what is our role in the revolution?

Screenings are free to attend, and all are welcome.