Adrian Russell Wills
Script error: No such module "Draft topics". Script error: No such module "AfC topic".
Adrian Russell Wills[edit]
Biography[edit]
Adrian Russell Wills is a Wanaruah Black Queer filmmaker based in Australia. Adrian Russell Wills grew up in the northern suburbs of Australia in Bourke, a small town of New South Wales.[1]. Throughout his childhood, Wills was fascinated by cinema as an ephemeral sensual experience. The filmmaker did not grow up in a cinefile environment and was thus more fascinated with cinema as an ephemeral experience rather than the blockbusters he would see at the mainstream movie theater. According to Adrian Russell Wills, he developed a true passion for cinema through the art of New-Zealand screenwriter and director Jane Campion. Wills was inspired by Campion’s sensual and unapologetic approach to cinema as creative storytelling. Indeed, Jane Campion considers herself more of a “story-teller” rather than a filmmaker.
First working as a makeup artist on film sets, Adrian Russell Wills joined the Australian Film Television and Radio school (AFTRS)[1]. As Wills did not come from a cinefile environment, he first struggled to adapt to the university jargon as he did not know the proper crafts or cinematographic terms for mise-en-scene. While noting that the experience of white privileged academic spaces such as the AFTRS are often oppressive to BIPOC artists, Wills was inspired and encouraged by the academia to always follow his own vision and honour and celebrate his identity as a Black Wanaruah filmmaker[2]
Adrian Rusell Wills: The Storyteller[edit]
According to Wills, cinema is visual storytelling. Wanaruah peoples are known as storytellers, carrying and maintaining their cultures through song, dance as well as visual storytelling[3]. Thus, Wills perceives his role as filmmaker or storyteller as an extension of his Wanaruah identity. Carrying Wanaruah storytelling as a core element of his identity, Adrian Russell Wills conceptualizes storytelling as a fluid multifaceted creative process rather than a monolithic concept. Indeed, before beginning filmmaking, Wills explored storytelling as a makeup artist, capturing the character’s story on an actor’s face.
For Wills, cinema is visual storytelling and was thus never a foreign concept. Rather than bringing Indigenous stories and narratives to the cinematographic space, Wills reclaims visual storytelling as a core element of Wanaruah Indigenous identity, culture and praxis. Reclaiming Indigenous visual storytelling through cinema, Wills dedicates his work to the celebration of Indigenous narratives of resilience, self-determination, brilliance and success, countering mainstream colonial narratives of Indigenous identities. At a forum hosted by OzDoz in 2018 on community-led documentaries, Wills notes that Indigenous peoples are often absent from the cinematographic space or when present, they are framed through a colonial lens that reinforces traditional colonial racist stereotypes[4]. For Adrian Russell Wills, news broadcasts present the most striking example of colonial portrayals of Indingeous identity and culture on screen. Wills recalls watching the news broadcasting Indigenous neighborhoods through the window of a police car[4]. The positioning of the camera shooting from a police car orients the spectator’s interpretation of that neighborhood as being heavily criminalized and unsafe, thus associating Indigeneity with criminalization and violence.
Unapologetic celebration of Indigenous identities and cultures: Adrian Russell Wills’ cinema opposes mainstream colonial essentializing depictions of Indigenous identity, offering an unapologetic celebration of Indigenous identities and cultures.
Wills further resists colonial normative conceptualization of Indigenous identities by challenging colonial hetero-cisnormativity. Narratives addressing the lived experiences and realities of intersectional identities still remain limited in the cinematographic space. Despite the slow increase of queer representation in cinema, cinematographic narratives of queerness are often white-washed and privilege stories of white cisnormative able-bodied individuals. Furthermore, queer stories in the cinematographic space often follow a homonormative discourse where queerness is framed from an assimilitionist standpoint. With his cinema, Wills refuses homonormative narratives by presenting unapologetically Queer Indigenous stories. Indeed, Wills describes aiming to “challenge audiences to discover worlds and characters outside their own experiences. I want to paint the experiences of living outside the box!”[5]. Thus, Wills’ cinema refuses an assimilationist approach to cinema, advocating for an unapologetic storytelling of non-normative intersectional identities.
Queer Indigenous Storytelling[edit]
Challenging mainstream representations of Queer Indigenous identities and refusing normative storytelling, Wills aims at offering an accessible cinema that can inspire Indigenous communities. If narratives exploring the hardship and violence often characterizing the lived experiences of many Indigenous peoples are necessary, it is fundamental for Wills to present stories of Indigenous success and brilliance[5]. Indeed, he notes that suicide rates are extremely high amongst Indigenous communities especially amongst the Torres Strait Islander community, targeting kids that do not conform to the colonial heteronormative binary. Thus, it is of fundamental importance for Wills to bring narratives of hope and brilliance to bring hope and celebrate Indigenous communities.
In the community-led documentary Black Divaz (2018), Adrian Russell Wills proposes narratives of success and brilliance within the Black and Indigenous Drag queen community. While Wills aims at depicting stories of, resilience,community care and success, he does not hide or denies the hardships and realities characterizing the existence of Black and Indigenous Queer peoples experience. Indeed, the documentary constantly altnernates between narratives of brilliance and joy and stories of addition, suicide and generational trauma. Adrian Russell Wills argues that a film like Black Divaz is vital in presenting a new role model for our communities showing we are all beautiful, special and unique, because of our spirit, not despite it.”[5] .Through Black Divaz, Wills offers an unapologetic ode to the Black Indigenous Queer communities in Australia by portraying drag queens and more broadly queer individuals as role models. While celebrating Indigenous, Black and Queer identity, Wills still aims at depicting the lived realities of many Black and Indigenous queer folks living in remote areas of Australia: as noted in the documentary, many experience suicide, self-worth struggles, addition, sex trafficking ect…
Drag queens and trans* folks are role models to Adrian Russell Wills that allowed him to become truly unapologetic in its art. Thus, Adrian Russell Wills perceives as his responsibility to celebrate non-normative unapologetic queer figures such as the drag queens that surrounded his life, not only to disrupt colonial narratives of Indigenous identities and cultures but also to offer hope to his community both as a Black and Wanaruah person and as a queer man. When asked about the target audience of Black Divaz, Wills emphasizes that this documentary was made by Black and Indigenous queer folks and is for Black and Indigenous queer folks[4].
Filmography[edit]
| Year | Title | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Jackie Jackie (TV movie) | Writer; Director |
| 2007 | When The Natives Get Restless (documentary; short) | Director |
| 2009 | Bourke Boy (short) | Writer; Director |
| 2009 | Daniel's 21st (short) | Writer; Director |
| 2009 | Bran Nue Dae | Writer |
| 2010 | Boxing for Palm Island (documentary) | Writer; Director |
| 2010 | The Story of Bran Nue Dae (documentary) | Director |
| 2011 | Rush (TV series); 1 episode
-Mortality (2011) |
Director |
| 2013 | Redfern Now (TV series); 2 episodes:
-Babe in Arms (2013) -Where the Heart Is (2013) |
Director, Writer |
| 2014 | 88 (documentary) | Director; Writer |
| 2014 | The Gods of Wheat Street (TV series); 2 episodes:
-Nobody Lives Forever (2014) -The Games People Play (2014) |
Director |
| 2015 | Wonderland (TV series); 2 episodes:
-The Other Woman (2015) -Split (2015) |
Director |
| 2015 | Ready for This (TV series); 4 episodes
- The Birthday Party (2015) -Fresh Meat (2015) -Back on Track (2015) -Blank Canvas (2015) |
Director |
| 2016 | Wentwork (TV series); 2 episodes:
-Plan Bea (2016) -Panic Button (2016) |
Director |
| 2017 | The Warriors (TV mini series); 2 episodes:
-Racist for Love (2017) -A Grand Tradition (2017) |
Director |
| 2017 | Black Divas (Documentary) | Director |
| 2021 | RFDS (TV series); 2 episodes:
-Episode 1.6: 2021 -Episode 1.5: 2021 |
Director; Writer of Episode 1.5 |
| Announced | The Princess and the Bear | Director; Writer; Script Consultant |
Bibliography[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Authentic Storytelling – Adrian Russell Wills: Do You | Screen News". Screen Australia. Retrieved 2021-11-14.
- ↑ Nothing About Us Without Us : Community-Led Documentaries - OzDox July 2018, retrieved 2021-11-14
- ↑ "Wanaruah". NSW Aboriginal Land Council. 2020-02-18. Retrieved 2021-11-14.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Nothing About Us Without Us : Community-Led Documentaries - OzDox July 2018, retrieved 2021-11-14
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Screen NSW". www.screen.nsw.gov.au. Retrieved 2021-11-14.
This article "Adrian Russell Wills" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Adrian Russell Wills. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
