A documentary on the Black Summer bushfires with distinct links to the NSW South Coast is winning international acclaim, including an award from Cannes.
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Former Eden-based ACM journalist Toni Houston, and award-winning director and producer Cian O'Cleary, who hails from Tathra in the Bega Valley, are celebrating "Wild Australia: After the Fires" winning three international awards in recent film festivals.
As well as being awarded Best Nature Film at the Cannes World Wildlife Festival, the doco was also named winner of Best Longform Documentary in Future Forest category in the World Wildlife Day film showcase, and Best Nature film at the Calcutta International Cult Film Festival.
The film was put in motion by Karina Holden, who has been making natural history programs for over 20 years.
Ms Holden said she felt compelled to capture the crisis unfolding with the bushfires and the catastrophic loss of wildlife and wild places.
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The main shooting of the film began on Kangaroo Island shortly after the fires had begun to engulf the island. Ms Holden convinced Mr O'Clery to get involved and help tell the story as it was unfolding.
Mr O'Clery was on the island within 48 hours.
The film was created over a one-year period as it mapped the ecological recovery of Australia and the devastating impact on the Australian wildlife.
"We made the decision early on that we didn't want to simply film animals at the point of crisis," Ms Holden said.
"We wanted to follow what would happen in the months after the fire, to chart potential recovery and look at whole ecosystems."
The filmmakers said "After the Fires" encapsulated the important fact, that the fires of Australia's Black Summer cost the lives of three billion native Australian vertebrates - which is the equivalent of almost half the human population of the planet.
Editor Toni Houston shares her experience in the making of the film
Documentary editor Toni Houston said films like these often become our video memory, a permanent record and reminder of what happened.
"It's weird when you watch the film because in my case I get jolted back to that summer and I can smell the smoke again. It's hard to do that with your human memory."
Ms Houston had been in Merimbula during the New Year's Eve fires, having evacuated her mother from her home in Bournda.
I get jolted back to that summer and I can smell the smoke again.
- Toni Houston
When asked if she wanted to take part in the film, Ms Houston had mixed feelings between it being really meaningful for her to be on a project with a personal connection, and the anticipation of being exposed to hours of raw footage of the devastation.
She also felt confronted going through the footage of the South Coast, witnessing hectares of land being burnt from drone footage, as it reminded her of her first hand harrowing experience of being on high alert during the fires while she was in Merimbula.
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It takes this really important wake up story that has been devastating to show the world how bad the impact of climate change can be.
- Toni Houston
"This is really a film dedicated to the impact on our Australian wildlife and I think it does that really well," Ms Houston said.
Ms Houston explained the film looked at the impact on Australia's iconic fauna, from wombats to kangaroos and especially the devastating loss of koalas on Kangaroo Island.
"For me the symbol of this film which is so heartbreaking is what was a wild koala, who is in a cage curled up in a ball with all of its paws bandaged and not able to even look up.
"It is just a completely devastated creature that has lost everything and is now mortally injured.
The film provides an urgent message to safeguard our environment and bring about the necessary intervention required to maintain biodiversity on our hotter, more fiery planet, before it is too late.
- Toni Houston
Ms Houston said when Ms Holden asked Hugo Weaving to be narrator he said yes without even blinking and was dedicated to the cause.
Mr Weaving is an ambassador for Australian animal rights organisation Voiceless.
Mr O'Clery is an ADG and AACTA award-winning series director and producer. His mother lives in Tathra and had already suffered losses in the fires of 2018.
His hope for people viewing the film is "that people will watch and not just remember what happened, but see that we can, and should, do more to look after our precious ecosystems."
Wild Australia: After the Fires can be viewed on ABC iView.
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