Retiree’s surprise debut in powerful Indigenous film

DAVID Nicholls had never expected to make his film debut at age 66, but that’s exactly what happened when his filmmaker son signed him up to star in his short film — unbeknownst to David.

The retired schoolteacher from Kingscliff recalls receiving a call from his son Dylan, who studied at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney, asking him to fly down the next day.

Before long, David found himself in a studio reading the script for a short film about Anthony Martin Fernando, an early 1900s activist who protested for Aboriginal rights.

“Then he took me to this big arena and there were five sets for a movie ready to start,” he said. “I asked him where the actors were, and he pointed straight at me. I said, ‘Well, let’s go.’ It was pretty neat; something different.”

Nicholls’ grandmother’s surname was also Fernando, and both families hailed from the same area in NSW’s north west so there’s a chance they are related, which is why Dylan wanted him to play the part.

In the eight-minute short, Echoes of Dissent, Nicholls breaks character a few times to share his own reflections on growing up as an Aboriginal in the 1960s.

He lived with his family in a tin shack with a dirt floor on the banks of the Darling River in Brewarrina.

“I remember when my mother would say to me, ‘Run, run, they’re coming!’ and it was the welfare officers,” he said. “I was three or four years old and I used to hide under the roots of a tree with my cousin until the car went back to town. After the 1967 referendum we were allowed in town.”

Many other children he knew were taken as part of the Stolen Generation — a period when children of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent were forcibly removed from their families by Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions.

“They weren’t right when they came home,” Nicholls said. “They couldn’t adjust to Aboriginal life.”

After enjoying his moment in the spotlight when Echoes of Dissent screened at the Flickerfest short film festival at Bondi Beach, Nicholls is looking forward to its screening on home soil during an Arakwal NAIDOC Week event at Byron Theatre on Tuesday July 8.

Eight short films from Flickerfest’s Indigenous Spotlight feature in the program, including the award-winning The Fix-It-Man and Fix-It-Wooman, set in Alice Springs.

For more information and tickets, visit flickerfest.com.au/tour/byron-naidoc