 Filed By: Gabriel Ponniah, Editor In Chief ATX Screen Scene The native Aboriginal people of what we today call Australia have long endured an unjust relationship with the country’s colonial powers, and the incompatibility between the two peoples’ lifestyles comes to a head when discussing the environment. A tenant common across various sects of Aboriginal culture emphasizes the relationship between the people and the land, a bond of such importance that it can be helpful to dissolve the boundary between the two concepts entirely. It’s this relationship that is at the center of Teresa Carante’s short documentary film Uncle Max & Draken. Max ‘Dulumunmun’ Harrison was initiated into the ancient ways of the Yuin culture on the south coast of New South Wales in one of the few corners of the island where such traditions have withstood colonial pressures. His pet dingo, Draken, accompanies him in the documentary, helping to illustrate the concept on which he narrates for the length of the short. Carante tells a visual story of an elder caring for his companion dog while Max regales the filmmakers on the importance of connecting with nature—an efficient way to underscore thematics in this brief, yet effective 4-minute project. Max has written several books that hope to illuminate and preserve the rich and beleaguered culture of which he is a part, and his name commands respect in Aboriginal and colonial Australian circles alike. In Draken, we see the struggles of Max’s people wrought upon the land, that is to say the environment. Dingoes are nomadic, says Max, and the colonizers who put fences around them to maintain the illusion that man is separate from his environment demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of perspective and difference in respect—one which mirrors the ways in which colonial powers have mistreated the Aboriginals alongside the dingoes, and not unlike the United States’ ongoing mistreatment of indegenous peoples of North America. The disclaimer that opens Uncle Max & Draken warns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers that the film may contain images of people who have passed away. When I had the good fortune to ask Ms. Carante about the meaning of that message at AniFab, she described the traditional avoidance practices of those peoples, that they don’t name or share likenesses of those no longer with us out of respect to the dead and to the grieving family of the deceased. The disclaimer underscores a theme which Uncle Max touches on: moving forwards as best we can. He mentions the pain and resentment of his people, festering for 300 years, and how letting go of that pain is essential to living, just as he’s had to do with regards to the pain associated with his eldest son’s suicide. Not long after AniFab 2021, Draken and Uncle Max passed away, rendering the aforementioned disclaimer all the more important to this powerfully moving, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking documentary short. To move forwards in the spirit of Max, we must reconnect with the land, support initiatives on behalf of Aboriginal people, and live Max’s three truths as laid out just before the film’s credits. But with regards to Max and Draken, we must let them and their memory return to the land while remembering their efforts, that we might preserve that from which we all come, and to which we will all, one day, return.
 Filed By: Gabriel Ponniah, Editor In Chief ATX Screen Scene Most every person who has devoted their life and career to the environment can speak to a moment of inspiration. Often from their youth, they describe a fateful encounter with the fabric of life on this planet that inspired them to explore and protect their area of interest—the forests, the grasslands, the sea, the sky. One such encounter forms the basis of Spark Bird. A birdwatcher’s first ever journey. The animated short from Italian filmmaker Laura Pauselli chronicles one girl’s discovery of nature’s wonder. On a droll, cloudy day, our protagonist Emma is enticed to go exploring in pursuit of an abstract light, leading her into a fantastical world she never realized was all around her. After unlocking her interest in birdwatching, she’s finally able to track down the darting orange glow at the town’s highest point, the Fortress, where she discovers it’s no abstract form at all, but rather a bird—her first of many in her nascent birdwatching passion. Pauselli demonstrates instinctive control of light and contrast, and shades well while framing efficiently, as a one-person animated project would already be time-intensive without the added caveat of being only a year into the craft. There’s a Ghibliesque quality about the experience, as she captures the pure innocence of her protagonist’s arc while building a semi-fantastical world contiguous with her own. Her pre-animation background as a character designer, too, is on full display, with amply creative designs for Emma and her feathered friends. While it bears some markers of inexperience (the scale of execution is understandably limited, and a couple beats here and there don’t quite join together smoothly), there’s a lot of impressive instincts on display in Spark Bird. A birdwatcher’s first ever journey. Pauselli has stated her ambitions to continue animating, possibly collaborating in a studio environment. If this film is anything, it’s evidence of her readiness for that jump.
 Filed By: Gabriel Ponniah, Editor In Chief ATX Screen Scene “There’s blood in the water.” It’s not for nothing that this adage is so universally understood to indicate danger ahead. Because if there’s blood in the water, sharks are soon to follow—hungry sharks. A popular nugget of wisdom suggests a shark’s thirst for blood is so powerful that they can smell even a drop from a mile away, but this claim has been largely overblown. And as evidence to that rebuttal, Todd Kortte’s risky diving snafu in his short “Bleeding In A School Of Hammerhead Sharks” demonstrates that these ravenous creatures are perhaps more gentle than their reputation would suggest. When Kortte and company embarked on this diving expedition in the Galapagos, they hoped to strikingly photograph masses upon masses of hammerhead sharks who frequent the current by Elephant Rock. What they did not account for was the eel bite which suddenly turned the clandestine video shoot into a life-or-death affair. After grabbing a bit of reef that encroached on the eel’s territory, Kortte was suddenly putting blood in the water, and it would surely spell his demise, right? Aside from the professional vlog style, as this segment would fit comfortably in any contemporary broadcast nature programming, the strength of the short is in its serendipitous message about the misconceptions surrounding sharks. Kortte’s technical competence is well-documented, and his storytelling sensibilities (possibly honed through his acting career or archival experience) help elevate this piece beyond a basic photography project. It’s as solid as they come, and while I’m glad to have seen this film, I’m happier still that in spite of the alluring dangerous twist, Kortte is still with us, able to make more movies.
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The ArchAngel of Austin Archives
January 2022
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