Utopia Girls by Renegade Films director Jasmin Tarasin screens Thursday 14th June at 9.30 ABC1
Utopia Girls, a one-hour documentary about how Australian women won the vote, by Renegade Films director, Jasmin Tarasin, screens this Thursday 14th June at 9:30pm on ABC1.
In a story relevant to every working-woman today, renowned Historian Dr Clare Wright guides us through the fascinating tale of how Australian women attained political power and influence.
To tell the story, Tarasin worked with some of Australia’s most prominent actors, including Barry Otto, Alexandra Schepisi, Roy Billing and Kerry Walker, who illuminate the film by reciting from historical texts within beautifully graphic archival sequences. The result is an evocative film about a little known part of Australian history concentrating on the lives of five little known but determined and remarkable women.
Says Tarasin: “I enjoyed the challenge of trying to create a visually and emotionally arresting experience on screen that would effectively represent this story. It was a wonderful and moving experience to collaborate with some of Australia’s finest actors as they brought some of the historical texts to life. I feel these pieces allow the audience to emotionally engage in what life was like for these strong and determined women and see what a challenge it was for them to achieve what they did.”
Utopia Girls was produced by Renegade Films in association with Screen Australia, Film Victoria and the ABC.
4 Comments
Hello Tasmin,
Congratulations on a wonderful program Utopian Girls – it was inspiring and so beautifully scripted, directed and narrated. I did have some qualms, however, about the claim that ‘Utopia Girls tells the fascinating, little known story of how Australian women became the first in the world to gain full political rights.’ This is not so. A large number of Australian-born women were denied full political rights, yet recent arrivals from other parts of the world were granted such rights. I refer, of course, to indigenous women.
Scant mention was made of the fact that suffragette Kate Sheppard in New Zealand with her following fought long and hard to gain full voting rights for ALL New Zealand women – the first country in the world to do so. Australia took a very long time afterward to recognize equal rights of every Australian woman, regardless of their ethnicity.
Neverthess I hope to see more of your quality productions.
Best wishes, Carol W.
I
I agree Carol – while I enjoyed the doco, the way that the indigenous population were disenfranchised was really only mentioned as a sort of throw-away comment once or twice, and it made me quite uncomfortable to hear again and again about this wonderful triumph for women, knowing that it wasn’t actually a triumph for ALL women.
I also found it odd that the words “feminism” and “feminist” were completely absent from the production, at least that I noticed.
Please ignore the glass half full women, Lisa and Carol.
Bloody well done, I say.
Clare Wright was marvellous.
Apart from their niggardly whinges (didn’t say “feminist”, oh dear) the film actually did mention that in South Aust, ALL women were full citizens – able to vote and to stand for office. If it makes us want to know more about the constitutional debates, what happened in South Aust after federation and so on, so much the better. A little encouragement to go and do some research of our own is no bad thing. Perhaps then we might learn a little about life back then, rather than judge the past sanctimoniously with the pursed lips of the present.
Once again – congratulations on a great idea well executed.
Might be worth having a link here to this measured account on the AEC website
http://www.aec.gov.au/voting/indigenous_vote/aborigin.htm
which has a rather more sophisticated account of the voting rights of indigenous Australians than the tut-tutting but ill-informed umbrage of Lisa and Carol.