A LOVE LETTER TO
THE NORTH

dir. Mardi Reardon-Smith
English language
37 minutes
NT premiere

A Love Letter to the North is a visual essay to accompany the filmmaker’s doctoral research about connections to land in Cape York Peninsula, far north Queensland. It is equal parts an ode to the people, landscapes, stoic cattle, salt pans, red dirt and bushfire sunsets of the north and to the slow work of ethnographic research. Using the non-narrative style of sensory ethnography, this film explores some of the ways that people use and care for country through the two recurring themes of cattle and fire. Cattle and fire are both non-human agents who shape and mediate all-too-human relationships, as well as relationships between people and landscapes. In some ways they point to the complicated histories of intercultural relationships in Cape York, and to the contested visions for the future of the region.

This film was made on Lama Lama, Kuku Thaypan, Olkola and Guugu Yimithirr country. 

BIO
Mardi Reardon-Smith is an emerging interdisciplinary researcher and artist currently based on Giabal and Jarowair country in the Darling Downs, working in anthropology and ethnographic research, photography and film. Mardi’s work sits under the umbrella of environmental anthropology and is concerned with questions of intercultural and multi-species relationships, ethical connections to land and place, and dwelling in changing environments.

NT PREMIERE
SCREENING
+ Q&A

THURSDAY 20TH MAY

FOOD SERVED 6:30PM
SCREENING 7:00PM
Q&A: 8:00PM

The Q&A will be facilitated by Dr Fiona Walsh.

The Walk-In Cinema
is generously supported
by Screen Territory