BIRRARANGGA FILM FESTIVAL & VICSCREEN CO-PRESENTS A MASTERCLASS WITH IVAN SEN

Ivan Sen presenting a masterclass at Birrarangga Film Festival. Photographer: Joshua Scott

As part of Birrarangga Film Festival’s six-day line-up celebrating global Indigenous films, acclaimed screenwriter, director, cinematographer, editor, composer, and sound designer, Ivan Sen, presented a three-hour masterclass on filmmaking in collaboration with VicScreen. This partnership between Birrarangga and VicScreen provided a unique opportunity for emerging and established filmmakers to gain invaluable insights from one of Australia’s most renowned Indigenous storytellers. 

Ivan Sen is widely considered one of Australia’s most influential First Nations filmmakers with a career spanning internationally recognised productions such as Beneath Clouds, Toomelah, Mystery Road, Goldstone, Loveland, and his latest feature film Limbo. 

VicScreen invited Wiradjuri producer and co-founder of Naarm-based production company Sapphic Flicks, Merryn Trescott to attend the masterclass and share their insights.

It’s not often you get to attend a masterclass run by Ivan Sen. Myself and several other directors, crew, actors, and film enthusiasts were lucky enough to attend as part of Birrarangga Film Festival.
Ivan asked attendees not to record the event, so any anecdotes are paraphrased and are subject to my imperfect memory.

Ivan Sen presenting a masterclass at Birrarangga Film Festival. Photographer: Joshua Scott

He began by speaking about the history of his career, how photography drew him into filmmaking and how his practice has evolved. Ivan has an impressive grasp of story and technical knowledge which informs how he makes films; often utilising guerilla filmmaking and documentary techniques even while making scripted stories. When filming Toomelah, Ivan was writer, director, cinematographer and sound recordist, embedding himself in his community to capture reality with non-actors. The script was entirely comprised of dialogue he’d heard in the far north NSW town, Toomelah, and is authentic to lived experience. Ivan spoke of how he would call out the script line by line to the actors and the magical moments when he would capture a real interaction by accident; a moment where the actors forgot they were performing. Toomelah wouldn’t have been possible if he hadn’t been the whole crew; the community wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough to tell this story if the person behind the camera was anyone but Ivan. No one else could tell that story.

As a young Wiradjuri storyteller, it is empowering and inspiring to hear Ivan speak about his approach to filmmaking. He isn’t reliant on screen organisations, funding models or large crews. His technical and storytelling knowledge sits within him in equal measure; ensuring he has the ability to create what he dreams up. This highlights the importance of placing the knowledge of how to tell story and the technical ability into our hands, our Elders hands, and our young people’s hands. There is nothing more powerful than having control over our stories when they have historically been told for us, about us, but not with us.

Masterclass attendees at Birrarangga Film Festival. Photographer: Joshua Scott

There is an urgency of story for our communities. The more access we have to the tools of filmmaking, the more we can amplify ours and our communities’ voices.

Ivan went on to speak about the importance of place when dreaming up stories. When asked about his writing process and how he comes up with his ideas, he said he often drives to the location, sits there and dreams up the scene. He will spend time finding how the scene might play out. How the characters move and sit within the location itself. His ideas often begin with a strong idea of the ending and work backwards from there; reconstructing the lives of the characters and how their choices brought them to this place.  

Writing, directing, shooting, and editing, Ivan has experience in each field. He is incredibly passionate about the art of cinema, and the fine-toothed control you can have over all aspects of your story in a 90 – 100-minute form. He pushes for particular actors in his films and often alters his writing to suit their performance styles and strengths. He has re-written scripts on location when a scene hasn’t felt right, but cautioned against too much alteration or your carefully crafted film could start to unravel.

Participants engaging in a Q&A at Birrarangga Film Festival. Photographer: Joshua Scott

He spoke about his love of working with micro crews and a mix of trained actors and non-actors. Actors who have worked with him seem to mirror his sentiments, enjoying the larger agency and smaller scale of those productions.

He was funnier than expected for someone who is spoken about with reverence and a little bit of mystery. There was joy and playfulness when he spoke of taking photographs and processing them in post to find the look of the film he’s working on at the time. He just plays and finds what suits that story. He isn’t confined to a single school of thought about what a film should be or what a genre should look like. It was freeing to hear storytelling of that calibre described with such play and clear enjoyment.

Artistic Director of Birrarangga Film Festival Tony Briggs and Ivan Sen. Photographer: Joshua Scott

It was a delight to attend this event as a part of Birrarangga Film Festival, not only because we were privy to the masterclass, but because events like this are an opportunity for mob in the industry to gather, catch each other up on what we’re working on, find potential collaborators and just give each other a hug. Everyone is so busy doing the work that often we need an external excuse to congregate. This masterclass and subsequent First Nations networking session was the perfect place to catch up. As this event was a part of Birrarangga we also had the pleasure of meeting Māori and Sami filmmakers who had travelled across the seas to screen their work at the festival.

Masterclass participants at a networking event. Photographer: Joshua Scott

It was a privilege to attend and write about this masterclass, (Ivan, I hope I haven’t misrepresented your yarns). I honestly took away so much knowledge and was reminded why our mob are the oldest and deadliest storytellers on the planet.

Mandaang guwu

Learn more about Birrarangga Film Festival