Drawing poignant parallels to issues of social justice, English assistant professor Helen-Lee Keller presented the film-screening of “Rabbit-Proof Fence” on Oct. 21, at the Multicultural Center, as a part of the Captive Audiences Film Series.

Directed by Phillip Noyce and based on Doris Pilkington’s novel “Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence,” the film captures the true horrors of the ethnic cleansing of Aboriginals, the rawness of humanity and epic beauty of the Australian outback in year 1931.

Australian Chief Protector of the Aborigines Neville (Kenneth Branaugh) enforced the racist policies that half Caucasian, half Aboriginal children must be separated, caged, and “advanced” to a white society. White superiority was unquestionable to Neville as was his mission to “civilize” those born in color.

Robbed of their half-caste children, lone mothers were left shrieking, beating scorching stones against their foreheads in the blinding heat of the Gibson Desert.

“This wasn’t a summer camp separation. They were wrenched away,” Keller said, “This was genocide.”

If children, the more defenseless of demographics, didn’t appreciate what White folk did to “purify” them of their Aboriginal genetics, they were flogged.

Out of all of the Aboriginal children locked down and laboring like machinery, three escaped the Moore River camp.

14-year-old Molly (Everlyn Sampi), her 8-year-old sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury) and their 10-year-old cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan) fled during a dawn downpour only to then be preyed upon by a sweaty, unspoken whip-lashing Aboriginal male tracker over a 15,000 mile trek.

Noyce makes it all believable though.

“She (Molly) is a hunter. She knows how to track, how to catch food,” Keller said, “If she lived in a nice middle-class urban home with a pump for water, or never had to do anything because her father brought home deer or kangaroo meat, then no it wouldn’t make sense that she’d be able to track her way through 1500 miles.”

The only source of direction the girls did have was the Earth’s largest fence, a rabbit-proof fence Noyce shows through exposition.

What’s also clever is Cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s camera works that propel viewers into refreshingly vast Australian landscapes and have us voyaging alongside three meager silhouettes as they forage into each night. Doyle draws us to Daisy’s baby face, her bruised and bleeding legs.

She’s often curled or perched; her hair a fuzzy mess unsurprisingly strikes up the image of a half-alive rabbit.

Likewise, Neville purposefully uses words that aren’t usually attributed to humans, like “recapture” and “recover.”

Just after Gracie was recaptured, we see Daisy and Molly at their lowest, quite literally.

Plastered against parched, stony grounds face down, I feel their ache; hear their inner anger in every whimper while blood-thirsty wild birds circle the sky. Doyle captures this sick, slow decay, masterfully.

Keller said the “Rabbit-Proof Fence” should encourage students to think critically about relocation. She said the choice to relocate people lies in the hands of “insiders”, those with power.

Despite the low turnout at the screening, the film sparked a rich, open dialogue.

“As a mother, the part was powerful when the woman raised her sword to the man. It was like a mother bear defending her child,” said Gail Carrethers, a member of the Japanese Citizen League.

Carrethers also brought her elementary school daughter to the screening.

“She’s going to find her roots,” Carrethers said, “I wanted to expose my daughter to this because this is what is really happening in the world.”

Students related existing language issues to the way Aboriginals were forced to drop their native language.

“Nowadays, it’s not forced but we kind of have it engrained in our minds,” electric engineering major junior, Ivan Cardiero said, “I know family members who avoid speaking to their little ones in Spanish because they want them to be successful.”

Both Sandoval and Anna Garcia, senior sociology major, said they suddenly felt exceedingly fortunate.

“Those girls survived almost off of nothing. I mean, we can’t even live without our cell phones sometimes,” Garcia said, “We live in this great country. Don’t get me wrong. As crappy as it can be, we are still very very lucky.”

Hanan Salem can be reached at [email protected]