Ivan Sen

His third feature Toomelah (2011), received a prolonged standing ovation from the audience as it screened in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival. The actors were welcomed with celebrity status and Peter Robb described Daniel Connors, the leading 9-year-old non-professional actor as "[handling] the international media like a pro."^[1]

Sen's fourth feature-length film Mystery Road premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in June 2013 and features many well-known Australian actors, including Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving, and Jack Thompson. The film was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.^[11]

His fifth feature, Goldstone, a sequel to Mystery Road, opened the Sydney Film Festival in June 2016^[12] and opened in cinemas on 7 July 2016.^[13] It features actors Aaron Pedersen, Jacki Weaver, Alex Russell, David Gulpilil, David Wenham and Tom E. Lewis.^[14]

In 2018, Sen acted as executive producer on the ABC TV production of Mystery Road, a six-part series based on characters featured in the movie of the same name and sequel.^{[citation needed]}

Themes

Commentators often point to landscape, land and place as one of the most crucial groups of motif in Ivan Sen's films.^[2] His distinctive portrayal of skies, roads and low horizons are Sen's way of addressing issues of location, dislocation and relocation in their relation to identity. According to Jane Mills, "as a descendant of the Gamilaroi people of northern New South Wales who were historically dislocated from their own land and forcibly relocated, Sen's films are undoubtedly intercultural, diasporic, and postcolonial and, as such, qualify as accented and intercultural cinema".^[15]

The documentary Yellow Fella focuses on the Aboriginal actor and musician Tom E. Lewis, who starred in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi, 1978). The character's "life was hauntedly close to [Lewis's] own: a young man of mixed heritage, struggling to find his place on the edge of two cultures".^[16] Sen documents Lewis as he hits the road to search for his Welsh father's place of burial and, at the same time, a missing part of his own identity.^[2]

Toomelah (2011), tells the story of Daniel, a 9-year-old Aboriginal boy living in the community where Sen's mother was born and grew up in. A hybrid of documentary and fiction follows Daniel as he roams around the "mish" trying to make sense of expectations of his family, his friends, and his own. Much of the script was based on notes Sen took of the inhabitants' own words, expressions, ideas and emotions, trying to translate the immobility from which Toomelah suffers—a place that has both lost touch with its roots and been forgotten by its founding state.^[15]

Recognition

In recognition to his contribution to the town of Winton in Central West Queensland where Mystery Road and Goldstone were filmed, Sen was honoured with a star on Winton's Walk of Fame during The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival in 2016.^[17]

Filmography

Feature drama

• 2023 - Limbo
• 2022 – Expired
• 2016 – Goldstone – Bunya Productions, Dark Matter
• 2013 – Mystery Road – Bunya Productions, Mystery Road Films, Screen Australia
• 2011 – Toomelah – Bunya Productions, Sydney.^[9]
• 2010 – Dreamland
• 2002 – Beneath Clouds^[9]

Short drama

Short drama films include:^[9]

• 1999 – Dust – SBS Independent, NSW FTO.
• 1998 – Wind – AFC, SBS Independent, ABC TV, NSW FTO.
• 1997 – Journey – ABC, Festival of the Dreaming.
• 1996 – Tears – AFC, SBS Independent, NSW FTO.
• 1995 – Warm Strangers – AFTRS, ABC

TV documentaries

TV documentaries include:^[9]

• 2009 – Fire Talker, The life and times of Charles Perkins – ABC.
  A film about Aboriginal activist and statesman Charlie Perkins.
• 2007 – Embassy Days – ABC
• 2006 – A Sister's Love – ABC
  The documentary traces the disappearance of
  Lois Roberts, the family's uncertainty on her whereabouts, the finding of her body and details about the inquiry and police action.^[18]
• 2006 – Broken Borders – ABC
• 2006 – Aunty Connie – ABC
• 2005 – Shifting Shelter 3 – ABC
• 2005 – Yellow Fella – SBS
• 2003 – Who was Evelyn Orcher? – ABC
• 2002 – The Dreamers – ABC
• 2000 – Shifting Shelter 2 – ABC
• 1998 – Vanish – ABC
• 1995 – Shifting Shelter 1 – ABC

Further reading

• Lawson, Sylvia (2006). "Along the 'pot-holed track': meditations on mixed inheritance in recent work by Ivan Sen and Dennis Mcdermott". Aboriginal History. 30: 211–217.

External links

• Official website
• Ivan Sen at
  IMDb
• "Beneath Clouds: language as simple as a look" by Mike Walsh
• Ivan Sen interview, ABC Message Stick
• "Ivan Sen", Vibe Australia Celebrity Showcase (2003, 2006)
• "Behind the camer, inside the scen", interview with Dannielle Hall and Damian Pitt, Inside Film, 17 May 2005
• "Crossing Tracks: Indigenous Films from Australia", Asia Society, October 2002
• Short profile, Native Networks, August 2004