The Witchdoctor and the Windmill” explores the life of the Indigenous artist, Linda Syddick Napaltjarri. She was the last of the world’s 6 ‘clever women’ who after experiencing a fully traditional, nomadic desert childhood went on to win Australia’s biggest art prize.

Linda’s insistence that she had her stepfather’s permission to paint his Dreaming stories (men stories are usually forbidden for women to paint amongst her people; the Pintupi) cast her as a maverick and led to a rift between family and community.

This film explores Linda’s personal and community struggles alongside the larger themes of colliding cultures as the Pintupi confronted new and bewildering intrusions into their country.

Her paintings are visual records of first contact in the 1940s as the Pintupi began their first encounters with White Australia. She was the first Pintupi Modernist and last senior female artist of her era.

This biopic traces Linda's life coming in from the western desert in a traditionally raised family to her painting journey which took her art to the heady heights of the European art scene, and then back to the art sheds of Alice Springs. The Australian government gifted Linda’s work to visiting dignitaries, and yet she passed away as a prophet without honour. With these exclusive interviews and her full co-operation, we wanted to acknowledge her astonishing legacy and place in history.

Director Biography - Robert Hamilton

Robert Hamilton is a retired academic who specialised in the history of the late colonial Australian frontier, Austral-Asian history, Education, First Nations art and representation in film and art, and Reconciliation. He has worked or been an academic visitor at The University of Sydney, Western Sydney University, University of New England, The Rijksuniversiteit de Leiden, KITLV Leiden, Michigan State University, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies London, and Nanyang Technological University Singapore. This is his first film.

Director Statement

My interest in Australian First Nations Art and the history of the first and second generation Western Desert artists began during a visit to Canberra decades ago. I saw a work of Linda’s in a gallery and over several days I returned to it as it had a pull which I’d never experienced before. After researching Linda’s life story I spent two years finding her.

On a whim and what I thought was a fool's errand I decided to make a documentary film about her. I flew to Alice Springs and we met at an art shed where the better known artists fetch up for painting season to make money in winter. She was well known for not giving interviews so I literally had my heart in my mouth as I walked over to her and sat down.

We looked at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Then she stuck her tongue out at me, laughed and called me crazy - Rama Rama - in Pintupi. I laughed. She asked me why I wanted to make a film about her? I had no film making experience and didn't work in the industry.

I told her I thought she was a national treasure and that the world needed to know about her life story and the stories behind the art before the stories in the Pintupi language were lost. Her stories in language were the stories from the other side of the colonial frontier and are unique oral and visual records of our shared history. They are a part of the national narrative and when she was gone those stories would be lost forever and slip through the cracks of time's harm.

She hugged me and told me to come back in a month. Linda always let me know where she was and my brother and I visited her many times during a decade of filming. I learned some Pintupi, I ate kangaroo tail, I visited her at Unduppa camp, chewed native tobacco and she and her husband Russel let me in to her world; the childhood memories, the coming in period, secrets which cannot be shared, her feelings about being catapulted to global recognition after winning the Telstra prize, her insistence about her right to paint her father’s Dreaming and the rise and fall of being a Prophet without honour with her own people while European and American collectors and academics were besotted with her.

It was a love story which can only be felt and never be adequately expressed in any language but film. We encountered many problems along the way and there were times that I just wanted to go bush and forget. Having Linda's granddaughter Lavinia help with the translation and with advice to maintain the wishes of the cultural owners was a tremendous help. I couldn’t give up. I promised Linda I would finish this film and I kept my promise. Does it matter? You decide.