Civic Cinema: Wash My Soul in the River's Flow

Presented by the City of Newcastle & Civic Theatre as part of NAIDOC week.

A FREE NAIDOC week film presentation.

In 2004, Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter, artists at the peak of theirpower, told their stories through spoken word and song in KuraTungar—Songs from the River, a collaboration with Paul Grabowskyand the Australian Art Orchestra.

Now, Hunter and Roach’s profoundly moving experiences—aboutbeing stolen as children, finding each other and returning to Country—come to the big screen in a cinematic celebration of love, survival and triumph.

Tickets are free, please click the Reserve a Seat button to book.
Duration 89 min
Classification PG Mild themes and incidental coarse language

AWARD-WINNING ADMIRED & REVERED

Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter are shining icons in our nation’sculture. Award-winning, revered and widely admired artists, theyoccupy a unique place in Australian music and society. As singer-songwriters and musicians, they have played internationally withsome of the greatest in the world—Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, PaulSimon, Joan Armatrading, Suzanne Vega, Sting and Billy Bragg,among others—but their journey to self-expression and successwas not an easy one.

In the 1960s, Hunter and Roach were taken from their First Nations families and institutionalised in Children’s Homes beforethey were fostered out to white carers. Separated from siblings andraised without being told they had been stolen, Archie and Ruby,like many Stolen Generation children never saw their parents again.Forcibly removing Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander childrenfrom their families was a key government policy of ‘assimilation’that persisted for 100 years although it was not unique toAustralia —the First Nations people of North America suffered thesame injustice.