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Director Biography - Samuel McCooey Takolander
Director: Samuel McCooey Takolander is an Australian film-maker of Finnish and British descent. He is 16 years old.
Poet: Maria Takolander is a Finnish-Australian poet. She is the author of three books of poetry: Trigger Warning (UQP 2021), which won the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2022 ASAL Gold Medal; The End of the World (Giramondo 2014), named one of the best books of the year by Australian Book Review and reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books; and Ghostly Subjects (Salt 2009), short-listed for a 2010 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award. She has performed her poetry on ABC TV and at numerous events, including the 2017 Medellín International Poetry Festival in Colombia.
Director Statement
In Australia, asylum seekers who arrive by boat are called boat people. They have been represented as illegally seeking asylum and kept off-shore so that they are out-of-sight and out-of-mind of the public. Working with the poet Maria Takolander, I have attempted to find a visual language that captures but also challenges the dehumanising treatment of refugees.
What do we owe each other as human beings, especially in times of need? This work--a collaboration between a film-maker and a poet--is a response to the refugee crisis. It emphasises our shared humanity, which it imagines as a space of meaningful haunting.
- Year2024
- Runtime6 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryAustralia
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorSamuel McCooey Takolander
- ScreenwriterMaria Kaaren Takolander
- ProducerMaria Kaaren Takolander
Director Biography - Samuel McCooey Takolander
Director: Samuel McCooey Takolander is an Australian film-maker of Finnish and British descent. He is 16 years old.
Poet: Maria Takolander is a Finnish-Australian poet. She is the author of three books of poetry: Trigger Warning (UQP 2021), which won the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2022 ASAL Gold Medal; The End of the World (Giramondo 2014), named one of the best books of the year by Australian Book Review and reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books; and Ghostly Subjects (Salt 2009), short-listed for a 2010 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award. She has performed her poetry on ABC TV and at numerous events, including the 2017 Medellín International Poetry Festival in Colombia.
Director Statement
In Australia, asylum seekers who arrive by boat are called boat people. They have been represented as illegally seeking asylum and kept off-shore so that they are out-of-sight and out-of-mind of the public. Working with the poet Maria Takolander, I have attempted to find a visual language that captures but also challenges the dehumanising treatment of refugees.
What do we owe each other as human beings, especially in times of need? This work--a collaboration between a film-maker and a poet--is a response to the refugee crisis. It emphasises our shared humanity, which it imagines as a space of meaningful haunting.
- Year2024
- Runtime6 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryAustralia
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorSamuel McCooey Takolander
- ScreenwriterMaria Kaaren Takolander
- ProducerMaria Kaaren Takolander
