SGS Summer Film Festival: “Rabbit-Proof Fence” (2002; dir. Phillip Noyce; English/Aboriginal)

"Rabbit-Proof Fence" is a 2002 film based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. It concerns the author's mother, and two other young mixed-race Aboriginal girls, who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, in order to return to their Aboriginal families, after being placed there in 1931. The film follows the girls as they trek/walk for nine weeks along 1,500 miles of the Australian rabbit-proof fence to return to their community at Jigalong while being tracked by a white authority figure and a black tracker.

The film will be moderated by The Europe Center faculty affiliate Krish Seetah, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of the ‘Mauritian Archaeology and Cultural Heritage’ (MACH) project, which studies European Imperialism and colonial activity.

"Rabbit-Proof Fence" is the last film in the annual SGS Summer Film Festival running from June 17th to August 26th.  This year's festival features films from around the world that focus on the topic of “Imagining Empire: A Global Retrospective” and offers a flexible lens with which to look at both historical and contemporary geopolitical and socioeconomic contexts.  For more information on the film festival, please visit: https://sgs.stanford.edu/sgs.stanford.edu/2015-film-festival.