Mining the riches of migrant cinema in Australia

The non-model migrant

It’s been more than 25 years since Greek-Australian director Ana Kokkinos delivered the shocking but revelatory tale of a bisexual young Greek man living in Melbourne in her full-length feature Head On. Controversial in the 90s, even today the film – an unrelenting, unapologetic exploration of migrant Australia, sexuality, and intra- and inter-community politics – presses on some collective bruises.

Based on the novel Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas, it is a worthy examination of identity, culture, racism, homophobia, belonging and connection, unflinching in its honesty about familial and wider societal demands. As NFSA curator Paul Byrnes notes, its 'depiction of the second generation of children of Greek migrant parents is exquisitely painful, not to mention shocking'.

The angry Arab stereotype

While Head On was groundbreaking, it’s not the only film to move beyond simplistic and stereotypical depictions of migrant families in Australia. The early 2000s saw a rise in ethnic tensions in Australia, particularly for those ‘of Middle Eastern appearance’ following the 9-11 attacks and subsequent years of domestic strife and global conflict. But two films would later take the cliche of the violent, angry Arab man and seek to interrogate the interior world of a misunderstood and under-represented minority.

First was Turkish-Australian Serhat Caradee’s Cedar Boys in 2008, followed in 2009 by George Basha’s The Combination. Both films tap into the racial tension between white Australia and migrant Australia, and both involve crime. However, Cedar Boys takes a nuanced approach, normalising its characters and their world rather than reducing them to cliched criminals. Protagonist Tarek, played by Les Chantery, is not simply seeking a higher status as a Lebanese-Muslim boy from Sydney’s western suburbs, he is coming of age, testing his own boundaries and levels of morality.

Sensitivities around the portrayal of an under-represented minority can be understandably high, but revisiting Cedar Boys uncovers layers to this story that show an unapologetic acknowledgement that, despite tension, there is ordinariness to the desires of these young men.

Pride and prejudice

The Combination, however, is a more brutal consideration of racial animosity – the white Australians are ‘skips’, the migrant kids are ‘wogs’ – with a central character in Lebanese-Australian John (played by Basha). In this world, many people are violent, if not in action, then in speech. Yes, it portrays these Lebanese boys as violent, but it does not forgive the racism that provokes their disoriented sense of displacement. Admirably, Basha acknowledges the micro-aggressions, not just the obvious ones that fuel violence and unrest.

Like Cedar Boys, the film also addresses inter-racial attraction and the burdens of prejudice that anchor them. But The Combination more explicitly depicts why some interracial couples are doomed to fail; while the white Australian girlfriend, Sydney (Clare Bowen), is fighting family disapproval of her dating an Arab, John is fighting for a life as a man from a demonised ethnic minority, and a family troubled by criminality.

Home away from home

Moving away from these more contemporary depictions of migrant life, there is the stirring The Home Song Stories (2007), from writer/director Tony Ayres and featuring international star Joan Chen. While this is a family drama, it is also an evocative tale of adaptation: migrants, having departed a homeland, must find a new one, creating a fissure between the immigrant parent and the child, who will fare better at becoming ‘Australianised’. The film crushingly reveals the toll being an outsider has on immigrants, but also demonstrates that even in a foreign land, ethnic minorities will recreate their experiences and seek each other out to create new communities abroad.

The generational divide

This story would not be complete without acknowledging one of the most significant tales of an ethnic minority, Looking for Alibrandi, a warm-hearted adaptation of Melina Marchetta’s seminal coming-of-age novel. Starring Pia Miranda as Josephine ‘Josie’ Alibrandi and Greta Scacchi as her mother Christine, director Kate Woods delivers a film that remains true to the story’s roots as an intergenerational tale of Italian-Australian women.

It is a big, beautiful take on migrant Australia but, while comical, it does not diminish its characters to quirky stereotypes. Rather, it exposes the bones of a life lived in service to others, weighed down by societal and cultural demands. It reminds us that migrant Australia is not some unknowable world of restriction; it is one that cherishes family and one where we are always, still, someone’s child.

Main image: Alex Dimitriades and Elena Mandalis in Head On (Ana Kokkinos, 1998). Courtesy: Head On Productions PL