Indigenous voice to parliament: filmmaker Warwick Thornton makes ads for Yes vote

Celebrated filmmaker Warwick Thornton will create advertisements for the Yes campaign for the Indigenous voice to parliament.

Filmmaker Warwick Thornton. Picture: Matrix

Celebrated filmmaker Warwick Thornton will create advertisements for the Yes campaign for the Indigenous voice to parliament.

The Indigenous director, screenwriter and cinematographer is a big coup for the Yes campaign as it works to arrest a slide in the polls ahead of the voice referendum to be held between October and December.

Thornton’s first feature Samson and Delilah won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2009. His latest, The New Boy, tells the story of an Indigenous orphan at a remote monastery run by an independent nun played by Cate Blanchett.

Thornton is a Kaytetye man from Alice Springs who once worked at the local radio station CAAMA. In The Australian today, Thornton tells culture critic Peter Craven – who says Thornton invented the idiom of Indigenous film – that he believes the referendum will succeed.

“I have faith in this country,” Thornton said. “I love this country. And I believe in this country.”

He likens the voice to a microphone for his people.

“Right now I’m going to keep myself going mentally and spiritually by doing the ads for the Yes campaign. That’s my contribution to who I am and what I think and what I believe. That’s gonna be very exciting.”

Of the series of advertisements he has committed to create, Thornton said: “I don’t think it’ll be the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge but it’s going to be really beautiful and special.”

“The way I see the voice is that the ear that is listening is in a building in Canberra and for some reason we’re speaking from the carpark – we’re shouting and they can’t hear us. Now you open the door and you let us in and we’re not shouting anymore. We can have a dignified beautiful conversation.

“If I think I’m a great story teller who is an Indigenous human being and that I have been given a voice as an Alice Spring born Australian who can make this beautiful film … Well, they don’t yet have the voice for themselves. My people, Indigenous Australians, should be able to speak for themselves and have their own voices in those halls in Canberra.”