Angus McDonald’s work as a filmmaker and an artist is steeped in activist storytelling.
His 2019 short film Manus transported viewers to the cruelly neglected refugees isolated and trapped on Manus Island after the PNG Supreme Court found the Australian run facility to be unconstitutional. The men took a stand for their freedom, an act which saw authorities cut them off from food, water, power, and medical supplies. Manus brings the stories of their journey and survival, amplifying the message to “Remember one thing, we are human beings.”
In his People’s Choice Archibald Prize winning painting of writer, refugee, and activist Behrouz Boochani, Angus captures the weight of this false imprisonment on a soul, showcasing the humanity of Behrouz as he looks into the viewers eyes, asking for empathy and compassion.
It’s that search for empathy and understanding that drives Angus’ latest documentary, Freedom is Beautiful. Here, we meet Farhad Bandesh and Mostafa Azimitibar, two Kurdish Iranian asylum seekers who Angus met when he made Manus. We hear their stories about being trapped in the Federal Government’s inhuman detention centres. We also hear their stories of freedom, and what life is like for them outside of these caustic and stultifying prisons. We see their art thrive. We hear their music, their poetry, their passion for living. And we get to see what freedom means.
In one scene, we see Farhad and Mostafa meet one of the Australian activists who has championed for their freedom and had acted as a vessel for their poetry as they were trapped on Manus Island. They embrace, before she reads them back one of the poems that Farhad had written. In this moment, we hear the words that so completely detail what the Australian Federal Government’s inhumane refugee policy had created in the fabric of our ‘welcoming’ society: “Woven oppression.”
Ultimately, Angus’ work, whether it be through his painting or films, is part of the art of unpicking that woven oppression that has become part of the blanket of Australian society. Through his compassion and amplification of their message, we experience a level of artistic activism that acts as a beacon for others to push for the freedom of the men who still languish in detention with no reason. For men like Farhad and Mostafa, they use their art to fight this cruelty. For Angus, he joins in that fight with his art.
Angus McDonald talked to Andrew ahead of Freedom is Beautiful’s launch at the Sydney Film Festival on June 11, with a second screening to be held on June 18. That discussion, which has been edited for clarity purposes, is below.
First, I want to thank you for the work that you’ve done in amplifying refugee voices. It means a lot to the people you’re supporting, but also to Australia as a whole.
Angus McDonald: Thanks Andrew, it’s very kind of you. I’ve met a lot of incredible people doing this work. It’s very inspirational for me to be involved with a whole range of people that are working hard to change the types of policies that we’ve got in Australia. I’ve also had the privilege to meet a lot of the people who have been subjected to [these policies,] so for me personally, the whole experience has been pretty incredible. I’m grateful to be involved and to try and make some [kind of] contribution along with thousands of others.
Can you talk about the moment that set you on this journey of amplifying refugee voices?
AMcD: There actually was a moment. In 2016, I just had my 30th exhibition as a painter. At that time, I was really interested in looking at what I’d been doing because I’ve been painting full time for 20 years. I decided to take six months off. That was the period when about a million migrants crossed the [Mediterranean Sea] into Greece on their way to Europe, mostly from the Syrian conflict. When I left art school back in ‘95, I went and lived in Greece on a small island for six years and started all my painting there. The island that I lived on was one of the islands that was close to Turkey, where they were getting thousands of arrivals every day.
So, I had this time on my hands and I went over there because I started to become aware of [and learn about] the Australian federal government’s hardline policy that they implemented in 2013. When I went back [to Greece], I first went to the island where I lived and then to a number of islands down the eastern coast near Turkey, including islands like Lesbos and Samos, a whole bunch of islands that [received] the bulk of those arrivals. I worked as a volunteer with a couple of organisations, and got into a couple of camps and talked to people.
I was really moved by the way the Greek population had stepped up to support people that were arriving by boat. I was amazed by the humanitarian approaches that the Greek people had found to support massive numbers of arrivals and comparing that to what we were doing here to a relatively small number of people just really shook me. Of course, a lot of people on these islands, they’re not wealthy at all. They were [mostly] fishermen; they didn’t have any resources, but they managed to find ways.
When I got back from that trip, I decided to try and go back and start producing some film content to share with Australians about the types of humanitarian solutions you can find, as long as you’ve got the will to find and use them. I took a cameraman back with me and another friend of mine, who did logistics and sound and we travelled around Greece. And after that, Lebanon, Jordan and started interviewing a range of people and refugees and began to get some little bits of stories together. It was a steep learning curve, and very exciting to embark on that journey. I decided at that time, having had no experience with film or video or anything like that, that I should use that medium because I could reach more people, so it was the start of [the filmmaking] journey I’ve been [on] for five or six years now, [alongside] maintaining my painting.
Painting and filmmaking are two very different art forms. I’m curious if you can talk about exploring the art form of film, while also turning activism into art. How do you manage to do that with both film and your painting?
AMcD: That was a very pivotal moment for me when I went over in 2016, because I’d been exhibiting for 20 years. I was like a lot of artists, I’ve been fortunate, I’ve had really good partners, gallery directors and other people that have supported me, so I managed to get a bit of a foothold as an artist. But after 20 years of it, I felt like I was really looking for a way to use my practice more meaningfully. It could have been to do with the age I was at, or when you paint and show in commercial galleries, it’s like this big machine. Of course, I love making my work and being in the studio, but you’re always working for the next show, and then the show happens, and then it closes down. And then you’re working for the next show. And I guess it was a good time in my life to think about how I wanted to use my art and what I wanted to do with it.
After I came back from Greece, I realised that I could use my experience as a creative person to try and make an impact. I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to work or how to do it; I just kind of dived in and gave it a shake. I think over time I cut my teeth on content by trying to make a lot of it and I started to understand how impact works in that space and that I still managed to retain this creative element in my life, which is so important to me. In some ways, I guess it was a wonderful transition. It was being an artist, but there was this other dimension that didn’t exist before which just made it more fulfilling.
I was still doing it with painting and with film, but I think after doing it for a few years, it’s really transformed me as an artist and from my own point of view, I didn’t really want to make art that didn’t have another story to tell, that didn’t have the potential to create an impact. I was really happy with that decision. It doesn’t mean every artist should do that, because every artist has got their own take or their own need to express themselves. We need all sorts of art, we need decorative art, we need art that doesn’t necessarily have a story, but in my own experience, this is just how it evolved for me, and I think it’s probably a permanent fixture now of my practice.
MANUS Remember One Thing, We Are Human Beings from Howling Eagle on Vimeo.
You’ve made Manus and now there is Freedom is Beautiful. Both are very powerful films. For a start to a film career, you’re coming out with all guns blazing. Will you swap between painting and making films then?
AMcD: Thanks. I’m really missing painting at the moment. I haven’t done a lot of painting in the last year or two, so I’m looking forward to getting back into it. With this particular project, it’s my first feature, and it’s not a big group of people, so I’ve been wearing a lot of hats involved in creating this film. I suppose if I come back and work with film again, which I really want to because I’ve grown to love it so much, I hope that in a way I can do that next time, in a sense, where I might just be focusing on direction or writing and have that space to concurrently paint at the same time because I’m missing it a lot, particularly at the moment. I’m glad that I got so immersed in all the aspects of it so I could learn about it more. There might be some other medium that I might tackle in the future. I’m not sure. I haven’t got really a very specific plan.
What were the conversations that you had with Farhad and Mostafa like to start off with about capturing their stories on film?
AMcD: I’ve got a friend, Craig Foster, who’s in the film, who’s very highly engaged in the refugee space. He’s very well known in Australia for his advocacy of refugee rights. He’s done a lot of amazing work. We’re friends, and back at the end of 2020, he came up here where I live near Byron Bay and he told me that he had a really close relationship with two Kurdish guys, Farhad and Mostafa. Farhad had just been released in December, from Mantra in Melbourne, and Mos was still in detention. He asked me if he gave me some footage of Mos from his detention at the Park prison in Melbourne, whether I could create a little bit of content and help to advocate for his release, along with the others that were there. I said, sure, and I FaceTimed them.
While we were doing it, Mos got released, which was great. Then I travelled to Melbourne and met with Farhad and Mos, and did some interviews with them. We all got on really well. Craig was there and we all decided that maybe we should create a longer form film about their stories, because they’re very charismatic and inspirational guys. They’re high-profile activists in the space as well as being very talented musicians and painters. So, it all came about that way.
Then we began this journey. Amnesty International helped with some initial funding, but at that time it was going to be a short film. We then kept shooting and it became a longer short film, and then it became a short feature. Now it’s where it is, which is two years later, a 67-minute feature. It was pretty organic the way we did it. I was quite happy at the beginning to make something around 15-minutes because my first film, Manus, was a 13-minute film. I understood that in making a 13-minute film you didn’t really have to focus too much on story and narrative stuff. You could make it like a poem. As Freedom is Beautiful got longer, I was very aware of the need to [have] a proper structure, a beginning, a middle and an end. That was something I hadn’t really attempted before. I hadn’t planned to do a feature after Manus, but it just happened that way.
You open and close the film with montages that use music and poetry. The way it’s edited is, in its own way, a form of poetry. I’m curious if you can talk about the meaning and purpose of poetry in Freedom is Beautiful?
AMcD: I think the interesting realisation for me about getting to know them was how they weren’t angry. The amount of pressure that they’re put under by the regime in that system [is] designed to break them. It’s also designed to provoke them and make them angry. But they were able to not get angry. I was interested in discovering more about why that happened, and how they managed to be able to do that. And I think one of the things I learned in making the film was just that their art or poetry writing, or music playing and writing was a way to transport themselves out of the situation. One of the reasons that they could find tranquillity was through their art and [especially their] poetry.
The other thing this enabled them to do was to write songs or poetry about their circumstances and use that art and share that art to try and raise awareness with other people. By sharing it, they were able to form friendships, relationships, and connections with other creative people on the outside. The crux of how they managed to be so successful as advocates all came back to these three core functions of being artists when they were in detention: to remain peaceful and tranquil, to express themselves and their resistance against the regime through art, and then to form these networks with people on the outside that could support them. That was something amazing that I learned through the shooting of the film and getting to know them.
One of the other interesting things about it is because I am familiar with some other Kurdish refugees that were held on Manus, including the writer Behrouz Boochani, who is quite a good friend of mine, was that from the moment Kurdish people are born – especially the Kurdish people who are in Iran, where they’re persecuted –, they grow up in a culture of music and art that’s all about resistance. It’s a very cultural thing for Kurdish people to be able to use art as a form of resistance. By the time they arrived here by boat in 2013, they had lived a life of understanding how to use that. I think that’s why that Kurdish cohort on Manus provided so many difficulties for the federal government, because they knew how to do it. Poetry is definitely at the core of their resistance and experience there.
There’s an emotionality to poetry, to films, and to art. I’m curious for you, as somebody who has been part of the art world for so long, you have probably witnessed a lot of emotional reactions that people have had to your art. Equally so, there is an emotional reaction that we have to Mostafa and Farhad’s art as well. I’m curious how important is that emotional reaction to art for activism?
AMcD: I actually think it’s crucial. If you can reach out with a piece of art and touch people by it, because all art is just storytelling, really, if you can use that mode of storytelling to touch people on a range of levels, if you can touch them emotionally through your painting or your poetry and open up a whole world that they hadn’t really contemplated before, to make them feel things. It’s such a crucial way to tell the story of systems and regimes in the world that are that are oppressive. Of course, you’re not going to touch everybody, but you’re not trying to touch everybody.
It’s a direct way to reach people on an issue like this. You can’t editorialise too much. If you want to do that, you have to present things in a certain way creatively as an artist and let people decide for themselves. It’s a core foundation for me in the work I’m doing. I’m not trying to tell people what to think, I’m just trying to present stories in certain ways through painting or film, and then hopefully reach people emotionally, then maybe that could be a catalyst for them to think more about it. I think that’s the crux of it, really.
Your production company is called Howling Eagle. What does that name mean?
AMcD: I think it’s the idea of having an eagle flying high, and it’s got this overview of the world, and it’s sitting there looking at the big picture and witnessing the suffering, maybe. I mean, it’s not that deep, and it’s not that intellectual. My ex-partner thought of that name, and I loved it. We used it together for a while. I really liked that idea of [visualising] an eagle flying over the world, but it’s howling because it’s seeing all the injustice and all the suffering. But it’s not that involved really.
