Etched in Bone, the documentary directed and produced by the School of History’s Martin Thomas and Béatrice Bijon from the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, has had its European premiere, with a screening at the Festival du film australien le bout du monde in France. Made over eight years, the film tells the story of human remains from Arnhem Land that were stolen from traditional burial sites by an anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution. Sixty years later they were repatriated from Washington.

The next Australian screening will be at 6pm on 16 May 2019 at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne as part of the Human Rights and Arts Film Festival. http://2018.hraff.org.au/events/etched-in-bone/

The next Canberra screening will be at 6 pm on 31 May 2019 at ARC Cinema as part of the National Film and Sound Archive’s Reconciliation Week Program. https://www.nfsa.gov.au/events/etched-bone-qa

Both events will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

'It’s impossible to do justice to the power, both visual and cultural, of this film … It is characterised by delicate cadence – a tone that captures the continuum of enduring, ancient civilisation and most of all of how life, which comes from the earth, must return to the country from where it came’ – Paul Daley in The Guardian