'Plenty Galahs' / Genevieve Gorman Deane
Content Warning: Conversations about Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence
Last year, my mother was handed a thumb-sized USB from her sister whom she hadn’t spoken to in over 20 years. The stick screened hours of Super8 footage from their 1960s childhood growing up on Wailwan Country within a toxic yt bubble of a colonised Gulargambone, Central NSW. To a stranger, these videos feel like gorgeous nostalgia of a childhood filled with bubbly love. Though, 30 seconds in, mum spiralled at the ever-darkening weight of memories which felt, at the time, impossible to address...
Until covid, I had been living out of Sydney since I was 18 and the way mum and I healed through our shit was to counsel each other over hour(s)-long phone calls exploring our inner depths. The calls were a way to connect, to unlearn and unpack - to derail the traumas in her head about her childhood domestic abuse, about neglect, about pain, about dealing with the endless triggers she’s only now beginning to define. It soon became obvious that talking, that addressing, that feeling with her was the only way to overcome over 60 years of bottled ache.
Plenty Galahs is thus an homage to how far we’ve come together in her healing, about my deepening pride in her unbottling the darkness, and about how powerfully awake her body now is to the trembling world - Her collaboration and starring in this short is my bold attestation to that.
Words, stills and film by Genevieve Gorman Deane.
Genevieve Gorman Deane (she/her) is an award-winning queer filmmaker currently creating on Gadigal Country, Eora. She has a deep admiration for the digital artmaking realm, which led her to pursue a Bachelor’s of Film & Television Production at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (BFA ’19). For the past 3 years, Genevieve has been independently Directing, Producing, Photographing, Editing and Designing short-form digital content, which enabled her films to screen at a variety of festivals internationally, such as Tropfest International Film Festival (2018), 25 Under 25 Film Fest (Winner), and Los Angeles Cinefest (Semi-Finalist). Genevieve currently works as an Associate Producer at Pedestrian Group, Eora. You can find her at @genevieve_gorman_deane or check out her new work at https://www.genevieve-film.com/.
Film Score "Live - Soi / Circuit Benders" by DBR.
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