Acclaimed filmmaker and artist Warwick Thornton has a distinctive and powerful cinematic voice. He won the Cannes Film Festival's Camera d'Or for his debut feature, Samson and Delilah (2009) and exhibited Stranded (2011) at the Samstag Museum of Art during the Adelaide Film Festival.
Mother Courage is an immersive film installation that offers a striking and poetic perspective of Indigenous life in Australia. Based upon Bertolt Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children, it explores cultural displacement and the tensions between contemporary urban and traditional Indigenous lifestyles.
On the final weekend of this much celebrated exhibition, Thornton's mischievous title character takes her art to the street, parking her van in the Fed Square Atrium. This will occur as part of The Light in Winter , Fed Square's month-long program of free performances, exhibitions, film screenings and forums.
The Warwick Thornton: Mother Courage Education Resource (aimed at upper secondary and tertiary students) provides background to the artist's immersive film installation. It includes discussion topics for extended classroom engagement and materials of particular relevance for Media, Studio Arts and English studies.