Yumburra
With the proceeds of his bestseller, Pascoe purchased a property on the Wallagaraugh River, where he grows native grains and reinvents ways to process them. Filmmaker Grace McKenzie (Audrey of the Alps, SFF 2013) deftly captures Pascoe's stories of the land, his childhood, and Aboriginal ancestry. The bitter response by some in the media and academia to Dark Emu disturbed Pascoe and upended his family, but in the local waterways and mountains he's finding strength and the courage to move on. Pascoe is a mesmerising storyteller, his resonant words matched by exquisite imagery, shot by Grace and her father, industry stalwart Brian McKenzie (Winter's Harvest, Rouben Mamoulian Award winner 1980).
Special Guests
Bruce Pascoe is a writer and farmer. He has published 36 book including Dark Emu which won the NSW Premier’s Award for Literature in 2016 and Young Dark Emu which won the both the Booksellers Association Prize and the CBCA Non-fiction award in 2020. He has published numerous essays and journalism both in Australia and overseas. he is also a farmer and grows Australian Aboriginal Grains and tubers. He is a Board Member of First Languages Australia, Black Duck Foods and Twofold Aboriginal Corporation.
Grace McKenzie is an Australian documentary filmmaker based in Melbourne. Her debut feature, AUDREY OF THE ALPS, won the Australian Directors Guild Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Australian International Documentary Conference Award for Best Documentary.
After cycling from Australia to Georgia, Grace lived in the remote mountain village of Argokhi, where she met Jimmy and his family and began filming what would become IN THE LAND OF WOLVES, an observational portrait of a subsistence farming community unfolding across the seasons. Her work is grounded in observational storytelling and long-form engagement with people and place. Her latest film, YUMBURRA, follows writer and farmer Bruce Pascoe, exploring land, culture, and family.
Tickets
Sydney Film Festival acknowledges Australia’s First Nations People as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land, and pay respect to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose Country SFF is based.
We honour the storytelling and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia.
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