Freeman
Director: Laurence Billiet
Co-Director: Stephen Page (Bangarra)
ABC iView
Freeman is so much more than a timely documentary about a young woman winning a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics. Its release, coinciding with the 20-year anniversary of what was internationally recognised as a high point in the staging of the Olympics, came also as a welcome relief. The uplifting vision of a country coming together in passionate support of Cathy Freeman’s bid to win the 400 contrasts favourably with the demeaning boundary disputes between states arising from Covid-19.
From the opening scenes of the crowd at the Olympic auditorium to families and neighbours gathered around television sets, from an excited surging hum to individual endorsements and the final lone voice shouting encouragement as Freemen emerged from the tunnel into the stadium, we relive the country’s total engagement. At the same time, we feel the immense pressure that such support fanned by the “beast” – the media to use Freeman’s own words – placed upon this one young Aboriginal woman.
Billiet deftly shows us the Freeman that lies behind the public but private face of an athlete dedicated to Olympic success. We are familiar with Freeman’s characteristically earnest almost anxious face, leavened by a gap-toothed and engaging, self-conscious smile, and most acknowledge that she was, and is, deserving of that so often misapplied adjective, “humble”. It seems that while there is much in her background that explains her unaffected manner – her sister Ann-Marie, afflicted by cerebral palsy, and from whom Freeman felt she learned humility and acceptance, and her mother, Cecilia, a loving and grounded presence – the documentary also explores less visible presences.
It may seem contradictory to call Freeman “humble”. After winning the 200 metres at the 1994 Commonwealth Games Freeman completed the victory lap carrying the Aboriginal as well as the Australian flag, an iconic image included in the documentary. Reprimanded, she ignored a ban by Arthur Tunstall, Chef de Mission, for the Games, again carrying the two flags. It was neither bravado nor sensation seeking that prompted this ground-breaking action, but a conviction she had a greater responsibility; to make known on an international stage the injustice done to Aboriginal people. Her self-effacing demeanour and refusal to be drawn into debate won the respect of many.
At the time prime minister Keating stated: “The Games [that is, Freeman] revealed that the overall sentiment of Australians is for the reconciliation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.” And so it proved, as another iconic inclusion in the documentary, the Walk for Reconciliation (May 2000) beneath the word “Sorry”, confirmed. The 400-metres event was not only Freeman’s “moment” – her chance to achieve the goal she had consistently worked towards since a youngster – but the means through which Freeman could assert the resilience of her ancestral lineage in the eyes of the world.
The invisible presences throughout her story are those ancestors whom she felt were so strongly behind her journey to success. Turning to another Australian national treasure, Stephen Page, artistic director of Bangarra, Billiet found in Bangarra dancer Lillian Banks and Page’s choreography the perfect expression of “an energy or spirit” that endows Freeman’s story with a special radiance and a powerful sense of chosen destiny.
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