Nomads
The struggle of the Southern Sudanese people is captured through the story of one man and his family and their journey to a new life in Melbourne
Directed by: Dimitris Komninoglou
Produced: Casey Norton
Edited: Terri Dentry
Sound: Peter Byrne
Year: 2005
Running Time: 10’00
This is the story about the plight of the extraordinary peoples of Southern Sudan. It is about the irony of the situation where around a dozen Sudanese African refugees have been employed at a caravan manufacturing plant in industrial Campbellfield, 20 km north of Melbourne. Refugees from the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Jur, Nuba and other tribes. Tribes that were once nomadic or semi-nomadic as they roamed the vast lands of Central Africa, in harmony with the changing patterns and seasons, in worlds largest swamp.
It is about the people so beautifully captured by Leni Riefenstahl and other photographers only a few decades ago. A peoples full of strength and vitality, proud and noble until they were decimated by the arrival of the Europeans, the Arabs, Islam and Christianity, Socialism and capitalism. Wars which have left millions dead and millions displaced.
The nomads have been fighting for their lives where almost everything has been destroyed. And now around a dozen of these nomads, most of whom are traumatised thru their experience build the state of the art caravans, with every possible convenience built into them. To be bought by affluent white people in their quest to escape the modern cities in which they dwell and see the real Australia. A land whose own indigenous nomads have equally been destroyed.
Nomads was a student production made under the guidance of the wonderful team at OPENChannel.
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