Paper short abstract:

SATELLITE DREAMING REVISITED is a website that explories Indigenous media work in Australia from the 1980s to now. I will discuss here how the site illustrates the different, and sometimes conflicting, media histories in the more 'urban' coastal areas, and the more 'remote' desert communities.

Paper long abstract:

SATELLITE DREAMING REVISITED is a website that analyses the last four decades of Australian Indigenous media.

'Satellite Dreaming' was a TV programme – broadcast in Australia and in the UK in the early 1990s – which traced the emergence of Australian Indigenous electronic media at the time. It is still seen as ‘a film of considerable historic importance’ (SBS/NITV) and a ‘a useful teaching resource on the history of Indigenous media, and how it differs from mainstream programming’ (Australia's National Film and Sound Archive).

SATELLITE DREAMING REVISITED uses the 1991 programme as the focus for exploring Indigenous media work in Australia from the 1980s to now – through interviews with many of the people involved in the original programme, and in the wider field – some of whom have also written essays for the site. The Sources section contains over 100 pages of information about relevant films, books, documents and organisations, as well as the interviews.

In this presentation I will talk about the development and production of the website. I will use material from the site itself to discuss some of the arguments about indigenous and resistant media that emerge from it, and in this way indicate how the site illustrates "the filmmaker's relationship with other members of their communities, and the "agency" of the camera in the differing relationships relationship between images and subjects" - particularly in relation to the very different media histories in the more 'urban' coastal areas, and the more 'remote' desert communities.