Yumburra
Following the Dark Emu phenomenon, Bruce Pascoe pursues sustainable farming and connection to Country in this gentle documentary portrait.
In the wake of the success – and media furore – that greeted his landmark book Dark Emu, writer Bruce Pascoe retreated to his tract of land, a piece of Yuin Country in East Gippsland, near the Mallacoota Inlet and right by the New South Wales border. Seeking to put his teachings on First Peoples agriculture into practice, Pascoe and his partner Lyn Harwood set about building the infrastructure for sustainable farming, healing their strained relationship and deepening their connection to Country.
Yumburra is shot in observational style by Grace McKenzie, who’s previously charted farming, landscape and community in the documentaries Audrey of the Alps and In the Land of Wolves (MIFF 2018). Following on from Allan Clarke’s 2023 documentary The Dark Emu Story and naturally intersecting with Pascoe and Harwood’s 2024 book Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra, it’s a film furthering explorations of Indigenous wisdom, traditional land management and the cultural conversations we need to have. At once a character study of one of Australia’s great writers – and great mavericks – and an unhurried depiction of life on the land, Yumburra makes a quiet, unassuming case for the lessons we can learn from elders and the environment alike.
Writer/director/producer Grace McKenzie and featured subject Bruce Pascoe are guests of the festival and will be in attendance at both sessions of the film.
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