Port Arthur survivor Bev Kelly slams Geelong-filmed movie on Martin Bryant

A Lara woman who survived the Port Arthur massacre says she does not want to see evil gunman Martin Bryant’s “name up in lights” as a film about one of the country’s most despised criminals is shot in Geelong.

A VICTORIAN survivor of the Port Arthur massacre says she does not want to see evil gunman Martin Bryant’s “name up in lights”.

Bev Kelly, 54, told the Herald Sun she felt uncomfortable about the fact a film on the 1996 mass shooting was being made in Geelong, not far from her Lara home.

While she would not object to a documentary being produced, a film with paid actors was another matter and it was unlikely she would go to see it when it was released, Ms Kelly said.

“It upsets me in a way and I don’t think it’s necessary . . . why should Martin Bryant’s name be up in lights?” she said.

“I don’t agree with it, I don’t think it’s needed . . . but I guess we don’t know how it will be presented .. . are they going to make it factual or are they going to make stuff up?

“And have they got permission from the victims’ families to make this film or don’t they even need to ask for it?”

Bev Kelly doesn’t want a film about Martin Bryant made. Picture:Ian Currie

In 2016, Ms Kelly told News Corp she saw someone at Port Arthur slide down a window after being shot by Bryant, and was convinced she, too, was going to die that day.

She miraculously escaped.

“I’ll never forget the smell. It was this overpowering gunpowder and blood scent,” she said at the time.

Ms Kelly said on Friday she could not imagine being the actor playing Martin Bryant in the film, and that he could possibly be portrayed “as anything other than totally, completely bad”.

She also struggled to understand how anyone who had not witnessed the terror of the Port Arthur massacre, could act it out in a film.

“I don’t care how good an actor or actress they are, I don’t know how anyone could portray anything that happened that day, nearly 25 years ago, if they weren’t there. . . and I certainly don’t know how anyone could play him,” she said.

“My life sort of went back to normal but I feel for the people who lost loved ones and who will continue to grieve for the rest of their lives.

“Now they’re going to have this film in the back of their minds, wondering ‘what’s it going to be like?”

It comes as Children’s safety charity the Alannah and Madeline Foundation - founded by Walter Mikac after his wife and young daughters were killed by Bryant - said there was a risk the controversial film could “normalise” Bryant’s pure evil, by treating him with a degree of sympathy.

Producers Shaun Grant and Nick Batzias, who are filming in Geelong. Picture: Peter Ristevski

Foundation chief Lesley Podesta said a film should not be made, “giving any kind of platform to or putting a spotlight on a perpetrator of mass violence”.

“We know that when perpetrators are put in the public eye . . you can get glorification, this sort of cult, and emulation of people like that,” she said.

“I’m not a criminologist, so can’t say whether it spurs people on but I know it normalises, to some degree, the idea that you can talk about those people.”

The film project led by director Justin Kurzel and streaming service Stan is titled NITRAM (the killer’s name backwards).

Starring Judy Davis, Anthony LaPaglia, Essie Davis and American Caleb Landry as gunman Martin Bryant, it has created a storm of opposition.

Ms Podesta said the foundation was not trying to censor the arts by voicing its objections, but feared it could give rise to the circulation of more hurtful and harmful conspiracy theories about the massacre and Bryant.

“We are very conscious the pain is still very fresh for a lot of the survivors and their families and for a lot of first responders, for whom it was an unbelievably traumatic experience,” she said.

Australians, and particularly Tasmanians, did not deserve to be “dragged back, to that horrendous crime” by a film, Ms Podesta said.

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