WILDNESS
Written and directed by
Scott Millwood
Produced by
Michael McMahon
Film Australia Executive Producer
Franco di Chiera
Post Production Executive Producer
Penny Robins
A Film Australia National Interest Program in association with Big and Little Films. Developed with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission. Produced with the assistance of Film Victoria, Screen Tasmania and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Film Australia © 2003
www.filmaust.com.au
WILDNESS
Wildness examines the legacy of Olegas Truchanas and
Peter Dombrovskis, two of Australia’s greatest
wilderness photographers.
SYNOPSIS
Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis were two of Australia's greatest wilderness photographers. Their work became synonymous with campaigns to protect Tasmania's natural heritage.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Olegas and then Peter used photography to galvanise public opinion as the Hydro Electric Commission cut swathes through the wilderness in the name of progress. Olegas is renowned for his slide presentations which, over 20 years, brought ever-increasing attention to the island's unique landscape. In particular, he captured on film the pink quartz beach and tea-coloured water of Lake Pedder before it was drowned by a fiercely protested hydro-electric scheme.
Ten years later, Peter's magnificent photographs of the Franklin River were used to spearhead the successful national campaign to save it from a similar fate. His photograph of the Franklin’s Rock Island Bend became a national icon, establishing him as one of the country’s most influential photographers.
Olegas and Peter shared many things, including a bond that was more like father and son. Both migrated to Tasmania from Baltic Europe. And both died alone doing what they loved - on photographic expeditions in the wild. They left behind a legacy of extraordinary images - contributing not only to photography but to an emerging environmental consciousness in Australia.
Their philosophy was simple and remarkably effective - if people could see the beauty of Australia's wild places then they may be moved to protect them. They may also be encouraged to understand the true value of the world around them.
Wildness brings together over 300 of their photographs with archival film and stunning contemporary footage in an epic story of two men whose passion for nature became a crusade to save an environment under threat.
WILDNESS
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
This is an edited extract from writer/director Scott Millwood’s article “The Making of Wildness”
"When you go out there you don't get away from it all, you get back to it all. You come home to what's important. You come home to yourself." Peter Dombrovskis
Wildness – the story of Tasmanian wilderness photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis – is one that I have known all my life. In Tasmania, the story of these men is part of our local folklore.
I was born the year after Olegas drowned on the Gordon River during the bitter and tragic battle to save Lake Pedder from inundation by the Hydro Electric Commission. I remember my mother kept Max Angus’ book The World of Olegas Truchanas on her bedside table. With its mystical, cloud-shrouded mountain cover, it was sometime before I realized that the words “Olegas Truchanas” across the front were the name of a man. Instead, I imagined that it was the name of this secret, Narnia land that existed in the abyss of the world beyond my Launceston home. At some point, perhaps I was about 10 years old, I understood that the images in this book were of my land, my home.
Through my adolescence I too began following the example of Olegas and Peter, exploring the south-west wilderness of Tasmania and developing my own connection with these places. During the 1980s and 1990s I witnessed not only the rise of Peter Dombrovskis as wilderness photographer and the saving of the Franklin River from Hydro development, but a continuing battle to protect Tasmania’s wild places. I recognized that the Tasmanian community was deeply divided in its relationship with wilderness; and that the conflict over these issues was not resolved by Pedder or the Franklin campaigns, but had rather become inherent to our island culture.
Through the story of Olegas and Peter I came to understand that this is what it means to be Tasmanian. Though surrounded by an ancient and liberating beauty, we are haunted by a destructiveness that is directly connected to the landscape. I wanted to lament the loss of unique places that were drowned before I was born, and to celebrate the triumph of community. The lives of Olegas and Peter, their photographs and their wilderness philosophies speak to these ideas in a manner that is not only Tasmanian, but universal.
In making this documentary film we wanted to take Olegas’ and Peter’s photography beyond Tasmania – to celebrate it with a broader Australian and international audience. Their story has a natural elegance and resonance that has the capacity to stir the imagination and lift the spirit – we wanted to create a film that could give this expression.
Collaborating
Producer Michael McMahon and I flew to Hobart to meet the wives of Olegas and Peter and discuss our ideas for a film that we had pitched to them by letter. Melva Truchanas and Liz Dombrovskis are not only the copyright holders of both photographers’ work, they have in their own way carried on the legacy of each man. We recognized that they were the custodians of their husbands’ stories and that their involvement and consent to the film was crucial.
The key to Melva and Liz agreeing was a recognition that Wildness should not be just about “two dead men”, but should contribute to contemporary environmental debate and pass on to the future the attachment to wilderness that Olegas and Peter shared.
I did not want the film to lecture. Rather, I intended to adopt the same approach to the film that Olegas and Peter took to sharing their feelings about wilderness: it needed to be gentle, noble, elegant and, above all, beautiful. If people are moved by their stories, then we are passing their ethic on to a new generation.
Over the next year Michael and I actively shared with Liz and Melva how we intended to approach the film. There was an informed and negotiated consent that endured throughout the whole process. This trust between us allowed Melva and Liz to be central storytellers in Wildness and to share very personal experiences, including their husband’s deaths.
In many ways the inspiration of Olegas and Peter—the way in which they rose to enormous personal challenges—guided us all through the making of Wildness.
Writing
The story of Olegas and Peter quite naturally possessed all the elements of a dramatic epic – two men, two generations apart, spend their lives protecting wilderness through their photography, but are ultimately destroyed by it. So the challenge for us was how to weave their two stories together and, on a structural level, how to integrate both photographer’s work with our footage.
After completing the first draft with development funding from the Australian Film Commission, Film Australia’s Executive Producer in Melbourne, Franco di Chiera proposed that it be produced under the company’s National Interest Program. Although the first draft had posited Melva and Liz as the only storytellers in the film, Franco asked that we push the story further and include other interviewees who would assist in providing a more dramatic artistic, political and social commentary.
Still holding to the criteria that the story be told by people who had known Olegas and Peter personally, I carefully “cast” new interviewees in order to address particular issues. Writers Richard Flanagan (Death of a River Guide; The Sound of One Hand Clapping; Gould’s Book of Fish) and Tim Bonyhady (The Colonial Earth) provided a critical and social commentary of the men’s work.
Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown was included to assist in the details of the Franklin River campaign and how Peter’s photos, especially the iconic photo of Rock Island Bend, were used.
Celebrated Tasmanian painter and writer Max Angus and conservationist Helen Gee were included as friends of Olegas and commentators on the way in which they, and Peter, would carry on Olegas’ challenges.
Wilderness photographer Chris Bell, a close friend of Peter’s, provided some technical understanding of each photographer’s work, while Peter’s first wife, Gabrielle Teakle, was introduced to bridge the gaps in the telling of Peter’s life.
Pitching
In pitching the film we also had to pitch the importance of Olegas and Peter as Australian artists – Michael and I faced the challenge of explaining their work to potential investors.
Peter’s photography and philosophy were distinguished from Olegas’. To us, his photography was about his relationship with the land, whereas Olegas spoke of a relationship between place and community. In this way, Peter’s work felt deeply personal. Man was visually absent, but the relationship between man and wilderness could be measured between image and photographer.
This was in keeping with the manner in which Peter expressed his ideas in words. He didn’t speak publicly of how the community needed to value the land in the same way Olegas did. Instead he included in his books and calendars, insights into his feelings about wilderness, in a manner that resonated with North America’s John Muir and Henry Thoreau. We argued further that these photographers were to Australia what Ansell Adams and Eliot Porter were to North America.
Fortune also played its cards and we were propelled forward as we learned that in 2003 Peter would be admitted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in Oklahoma, USA. He would be the first Australian photographer to be recognized in this way.
Shooting
We proposed two shoots in order to create a sense of seasonal change. We planned to take our crew into the wilderness, including down the Franklin River, filming from a raft in order to emulate the river journeys that I had written into the script. The two shoots – almost three weeks in August and September 2002, and another ten days in November – were highly demanding. It was a credit to Michael and production managers, Chris Gallagher and Martin Thiele, that every logistic had been thought through with such thoroughness.
I had relied on cinematographer Bob Humphreys during the interview shoot so it was great to finally get out into the field. In the late winter’s snow and rain and sleet, Bob and I shot the homage to Octopus Tree on Mt Wellington, cutaways of Melva and Liz on the mountain, aerials over the south-west, log trucks careering abusively into Hobart, reconstructions of Olegas’ town hall presentations and Peter in hospital, beach scenes, cable logged areas in the Styx Valley and arguably the world’s longest dolly shot – a 140 metre vertical rise up the Gordon Dam wall.
Bob and I had planned the aesthetics of this shoot very carefully. During pre-production I had worked with story-boarder, Maria Peda, to plan the look and feel of the film – the ten rolls of Super 16mm stock were going to be used carefully.
By the time the second shoot came around, editor Bill Murphy (Romper Stomper, Metal Skin, Exile in Sarajevo) and I had been working for six weeks, and had a clear vision of exactly what shots were required.
For this shoot, cinematographer Wade Fairley (Macquarie Island) came on board. Wade had recently moved to Tasmania, had extensive wilderness experience and had been a river guide on the Franklin during his early twenties.
It was a huge challenge to film on the Franklin River. It is truly wild and dangerous country. The cost and risk were high. No-one had filmed on the Franklin River in twenty years – let alone filmed from a raft as it embarked on its journey.
With guides Josh Firth and Tim Trevaskis and camera assistant and river enthusiast, Matt Newton, Wade and I set off from the Mt McCall entry point by raft with waterproofed film and camera gear, tripod, jib-arm and gear and food for four days.
Filming from the raft as we travelled downstream, we reached the Cascades that night, establishing a base for the next three days. The dramatic overhanging cliffs negated the need for tents and we slept under the stars. The next day we would shoot Rock Island Bend. We were expecting rain and planned to start early. It would be all hands on deck, with guides Josh and Tim also operating as camera assistants.
The rain began in the middle of the night and didn’t stop. Tim, Josh and I pulled the raft by its rope, still in the water, upstream against the current. I wanted to use the raft as a “river-dolly” in order to allow us to shoot moving footage as we approached Rock Island Bend – the idea being that in the film the viewer would see Peter’s photo and then dissolve through it into moving footage, that all of a sudden the rock that had changed Australian history would loom up and the audience would be there.