Night Time Go

2017, 31’10’’

Karrabing Film Collective, Night Time Go, 2017 (still).

Night Time Go is an exploration of the settler state’s attempt to remove Indigenous people from their lands during the Second World War using truck, train, and rifle and the refusal of the Karrabing ancestors to be detained. The film begins by hewing closely to the actual historical details of this ancestral journey but slowly turns to an alternative history in which the group inspires a general Indigenous insurrection driving out settlers from the Top End of Australia. Mixing drama and humor, history and satire, Night Time Go pushes subaltern history beyond the bounds of settler propriety.

“A palpable anger is leavened by empathy, wit and humour: those new to its work might start with the satirical Night Time Go (2017), which combines doctored archival footage with a quasi-British Pathé voiceover to tell an alternative history of the Belyuen community.” Ben Eastham, Art Review

Premiere and Commissioned by:
Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of The Wildly Improbable, curated by Adania Shibli.