The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland
2018 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
26:29 minutes
Karrabing Film Collective
The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland by Karrabing Film Collective is a surreal exploration of Western toxic contamination, capitalism, and human and non-human life. Set in a land and seascape poisoned by capitalism where only Aboriginals can survive long periods outdoors, the film tells the story of a young Indigenous man, Aiden, taken away when he was just a baby to be a part of a medical experiment to save the white race. He is then released back into the world to his family. As he travels with his father and brother across the landscape he confronts two possible futures and pasts embodied by his own tale and the timely narratives of multinational chemical and extractive industries. The psychedelic and fragmented nature of the film reflects the insidious violence that corrupts the psychology of those who are structurally, economically, and politically displaced. As Aiden, a stranger to his own land, is reinserted into existence he becomes acquainted with territorial nature and folklore—mermaids, a bee, a cockatoo bring forth a pertinent inquiry of whose and which lives matter.
Karrabing Film Collective is an indigenous media group consisting of over 30 members, bringing together Aboriginal filmmakers from Australia’s Northern Territory. They approach filmmaking as a mode of self-organization and a means of investigating contemporary social conditions of inequality. Through the collective’s inventive artistic language, their work challenges historical and contemporary structures of settler power. Most of the members of the collective live in rural Indigenous communities in the outback of Australia with low or no income. The films represent their lives and through the process create bonds with their land while intervening in global images of Indigeneity. International screenings and publications of their work over the last few years have provided opportunities for some members of the collective to obtain passports, allowing them to develop local artistic languages and for audiences to understand new forms of collective Indigenous agency.
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