Q&A with Stephen Page on the documentary Freeman

How did you come to be involved with the movie Freeman?

Laurence (Billiet), the director, was the one who had the initial idea. Before the whole COVID situation we had a plan to screen this at the Sydney Opera House, on the forecourt – do a little video art performance and show the documentary. That’s how Bangarra got involved, and I was going to help direct it because of my involvement in the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony in 2000 with the Indigenous segment. Laurence was a big fan of SPEAR, a feature film I did a few years ago, and she wanted another layer in the documentary, because Cathy wasn’t talking to camera as such: she did a lot of recordings of Cathy telling stories. Laurence knew the time of 20 years was coming up and was able to get Cathy to tell her story and relive that moment. So we wanted to find a way to have Cathy now reflect that time and to reflect her journey from a young girl, her family and her growth. But also Laurence had the idea of having an energy, or a spirit, through movement and dance. So to represent that consciousness of memory and reflection, we were able to get one of the Bangarra dancers, Lillian Banks, to portray that energy.

Stephen Page co-directed the Indigenous segment of the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony.Credit: Justin McManus

Do you have clear memories of watching the race in 2000?

Yeah, because we did the opening ceremony and I directed the Indigenous segment with Rhoda Roberts – everything was about the Olympics and being a part of it and we were just absorbed by anything to do with it, so of course watching the race was a big priority in our calendars. We were actually performing at the Opera House and we all just stopped to watch the race down in the Opera House green room with all the artists. But unfortunately I wasn’t there inside the stadium.

Do you feel that Cathy’s victory was an important moment for the country: not just as a sporting achievement?

I don’t think any sportsperson in the world had that kind of pressure. From 1967 to 2000, thirty-three years, and for ten of those thirty-three years you’ve got this young girl whose dream was to win a gold medal in the Olympics, and that’s what this story tells. At the same time, running alongside it is her very proud Aboriginal heritage. And you can’t separate Aboriginality from politics: you live inside it. The many layers of politics are always going to be around you when you don’t have constitutions that reflect the right outcomes for Indigenous people. I remember when we were told that she was going to light the cauldron – not just because she was the next generation and we were in the next millennium, but the fact that she was a proud Aboriginal athlete. Those young Indigenous kids in primary schools who wrote their essays for months later on an amazing role model and her ability to inspire, and empower – she embodied a great sense of resilience and optimism for Indigenous people. People will always talk about that moment, where they were at that moment, and that’s just Australians in general, but for Aboriginal people it’s a wonderful empowerment bullet.

Cathy Freeman in a scene from the documentary Freeman.Credit: ABC

Are dance and sport natural bedfellows?

Totally cousins. I look at my dancers today, seventy young Indigenous full-time artists aged between 20 and 40, and we’ve been able to survive 30 years. [Bangarra] is the only First Nations full-time [dance] company in the world. We travelled through Canada at the end of last year for five weeks, a full-on international tour, we were in 2000-seat venues in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, we were able to go out of Toronto into the Six Nations reservation and do workshops and uproot 300 of the First Nations mob there to bring them into the mainstream venue to watch this contemporary theatrical ceremony. When we travel overseas we’re cultural ambassadors, and with that comes a regimen of practice and discipline. We always say: you’re like athletes, we’ll treat you like athletes. You just express the discipline of that differently, through the performing arts, through telling stories.

What can you tell me about Lillian Banks, the dancer in the film?

Lillian’s a Yawuru girl from Broome. I had Lillian in my head when we were having the creative conversations in the early part. There’s this beautiful picture on-set of when Cathy met Lillian – Lillian’s 24 so she was a four or five-year-old (in 2000), she has a strong memory of that

moment. They have a very similar look, their energy and their spirit. When Cathy saw what Lillian was doing – moving her body and representing this eternal spirit and energy – Cathy got it straight away. So Cathy just kept smiling. And obviously she was nervous: she’s standing in this theatrical womb, this huge black box where each wall is covered with screens reflecting videos and photos from that race, and we’ve trapped her inside. We put on the race and left her in the middle and ran the camera on the outside just to her face on the inside – she was saying to me that she’d never seen the race completely through properly, and her daughter only found it a year ago. Cathy was sharing these stories with Lillian, and here Lillian was with this role model in front of her. They didn’t say a lot, but they just smiled a lot at each other. It was just a wonderful connection.

Freeman is on ABC, Sunday, from 7.40pm.