Servant or Slave
During the Stolen Generations, thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal girls were taken from their possessions and pressed into servitude by the Government. These were allegedly employed as servants, but with impacts that echo powerfully to the day, their lives all too frequently became an inescapable cycle of enslavement, rape and abuse, with control over their moves, salary and living conditions. Recounting the stories of five of those women -- Violet Rita and the three Wenberg sisters -- Servant or Slave is just actually a bit of first-person testimony to some unacknowledged and shadowy corner of heritage. Shot with commendable craft and humanity from documentarian Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, MIFF 2012), Servant or Slave is a work of amazing despair and despair, bringing to forceful life the human tragedy of Australia's Indigenous history in the unadorned words of people who dwelt.