WINHANGANHA, film screening and Q&A with Jazz Money

WINHANGANHA (Wiradjuri language: Remember, know, think) is a lyrical journey of archival footage and sound, poetry and original composition.

Commissioned by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), it examines how archives and the legacies of collection affect First Nations people and wider Australia, told through the lens of acclaimed Wiradjuri artist Jazz Money.

WINHANGANHA was born from a desire to make sense of the archival inheritances that shape our present realities. Across a two-year period working closely with the NFSA collection, Jazz sifted through and reflected on the institution's extensive collections of works made by and about First Nations Australian people. 

Through film, television, audio and music recordings collected since the advent of these technologies, the film is a poem in five acts that attempts to acknowledge the horrors, joys and beauties held within the archive.

The film questions power and position, storyteller and the stories told. It includes original poetry written and performed by Jazz and an original score by Filipino-Aboriginal rapper and composer DOBBY (Rhyan Clapham). 

WINHANGANHA is centred upon the belief that it is our own bodies that are the truest archive of our experience, and that First Nations bodies tell a powerful story of sovereignty and resistance. And while First Nations bodies have been documented, mythologised, degraded and catalogued and stored within the colonial gaze of archive, these bodies, these people, have danced and sung and marched and are utterly whole, beyond what can be held in these collections. The film asks how we will create new futures through that which we inherit.

Jazz Money is a Wiradjuri poet and artist producing works that encompass installation, performance, film and print. Their writing and art has been presented, performed and published nationally and internationally. Jazz has written two award-winning poetry collections how to make a basket and mark the dawn, and the children’s book The Frog’s First Song illustrated by Jason Phu. Trained as a filmmaker, Jazz’s first feature film WINHANGANHA (2023) interrogates legacies of archives on First Nations people and was commissioned by the Australian National Film and Sound Archive.

This screening is part of the free academic symposium MEDIA FUTURES IN TIMES OF CRISIS.