THE LANGUAGE PARTY
A documentary film. Duration: 60 min in post-production. To be accomplished in December 2026.
A white linguist, Steven Bird needs Miriwoong speakers to join his ‘Language Party’ in Kununurra, East Kimberley, but there seems to be only a handful of those who know words in this critically endangered language. With the help of Ian Gumbula, a Yolŋu mentor, the quest for storytellers turns into a wild goose chase through town camps and ancestral lands. The key to language revitalisation is yet to be discovered.
The project initially started with a fairly straightforward need for videography around Steven’s language revitalisation work and his Language Parties. Over time, however, it developed into an ongoing conversation between Steven and Ian Gumbula, myself (filmmaker), the Miriwoong community and, most importantly, its Elders about what language revitalisation actually means when it is led by the community itself.
One of the recurring questions has been the tension between oral culture and the Western educational paradigm, which tends to organise language through written words, dictionaries, curricula and the regimented space of the classroom. The people we have been filming continually bring us back to the language living dictionary based in the ancestral Country, buttressed by storytelling, relationships and everyday interaction.
That has also changed the way we are making the film. Rather than simply documenting a research project and explaining its findings, we began considering documentary filmmaking itself as another research and storytelling space. The observational method allows room for uncertainty, unexpected encounters (wobbly camera work) and constant revision of our original assumptions. In a way, we have had to learn the same lesson that sits at the heart of The Language Party: that following rather than guiding creates interesting results.
We have also learned to accept our good luck as a guide. Some of the strongest moments in the documentary came from encounters and situations we could never have scripted or planned.
GAY HAWKES, THE QUEEN OF MAKERS
Gay Hawkes (1942-2025) was a nationally respected furniture maker, sculptor and artist, particularly well known for pioneering the use of found materials such as horizontal scrub, driftwood, and shipping pallets in her furniture.
Roger Scholes (1950 – 2022) was an Australian filmmaker who worked in a variety of genres, including drama, documentary, and art. Roger was filming Gay Hawkes for over 30 years of their friendship and upon events like a furniture making workshop for girls, aiming to develop their independence, or Gay’s expedition to truwana / Cape Barren Island, to assemble the Christmas show with the putalina people. In 2019, Natalia Laska joined Roger in his effort to document Gay’s life.
“Roger’s footage is ‘free’ from the influence of the film industry or and schedule constraints; therefore, it represents spontaneous moments captured by the filmmaker who liked to chat with his protagonists. Roger's close and not always easy relationship with Gay, is captured in his footage, and often feels like a stream-of-consciousness. After joining Roger in the process of filming Gay's life, I built a friendship with both of them. All of us were always hungry of ‘fresh’ content, either personal or political. Gay was a fierce feminist and activist who never stopped questioning Australian politics in relation to Indigenous people, gender constrains or the British royals that she equally loved and hated. In Gay’s last years, her creative anger was directed at the social framework governing the aging of women. Again she refused to conform to the expectation of a 'graceful disappearance".
(Natalia Laska).
The documentary fusion of two filmmakers work is covering over 30 years of Gay Hawkes life and art making is currently in post-production, aiming to be completed in 2027.
