Abstract
Reflects on the themes of “remaking history” and “remapping cinema” by focussing on the construction of an Indigenous perspective on Australian national history in the recent seven-part television documentary series, First Australians. Considers the question of why the producers chose to take a national perspective in this series, and the implications of this perspective for our understandings of both the nation’s past and ongoing relations between black and white Australians. Proposes that this strategic approach to Australian historiography demands that we rethink the ways in which we conceptualise Indigenous film and television, in particular the way in which Indigenous film and television has been positioned on the scholarly “map” of Australian cinema and television as something that exists at the margins of mainstream production and narratives.
