[Release by ScreenWest]
The Western Australian documentary CASE 442 has won the Best International Documentary Award at the 2008 International Cherokee Film Festival and WA short documentary Jarlmandangah: Our Dream, Our Reality has won the Best International Short Documentary Award.
Case 442 is an intimate journey that follows Indigenous Western Australian Frank Burns’s painful struggle and the final laying to rest of his beloved mother.
Frank Byrne was forcibly removed from his mother Maudie at the age of 5. He has been searching and yearning for her almost all of his life. After 60 years, Frank finally finds her among the patient case records of Perth’s Claremont Mental institute where she was incarcerated with symptoms of depression and distress, and died after many years locked away. Frank’s determination to reach some kind of closure sees him promise and prepare to have Maudie’s remains exhumed from her pauper’s grave in the city and returned back to her country in the Kimberley for the burial she deserves. An emotionally moving story, CASE 442 portrays an unbreakable mother-son bond and the impact of the Native Affairs child removal policy.
The documentary was written and directed by Western Australian filmmaker Mitch Torres and produced by Citt Willams (CAAMA Productions) for Imparja Television and ABC TV in association with ScreenWest and Lotterywest. The film screened on ABC TV in 2005.
Jarlmandangah: Our Dream, Our Reality was directed by Cornel Ozies, with Mitch Torres as the director-mentor.