Podcast Summary: William Lempert, "Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

Podcast: New Books Network - Anthropology Channel
Host: Regan Gillum
Guest: Dr. William Lempert
Date: October 14, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores Dr. William Lempert’s new book, Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema, which draws on extensive ethnographic research with Aboriginal filmmakers in the Kimberley region of Australia. The conversation delves into the transformative power of Indigenous filmmaking, the unique production values and social dynamics at play, and the broader implications for anthropology and Indigenous media studies.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Lempert's Background and Journey Into the Project

• Personal and Academic Path: Dr. Lempert describes a serendipitous journey beginning in 2006 as an undergraduate in Australia, drawn first by music and local bands, then returning for a PhD and ultimately committing to over 31 months of research in the Kimberley.
  • "I fell in love with the variety of bands that were from a small town in northwestern Australia... I really wanted to amplify the things that were already happening in those places, rather than my particular vision..." (03:01)
• Fieldwork Philosophy: Emphasizes a responsive, service-based approach, aiming to be practically useful to the communities—often stepping in wherever needed during film productions.

2. Central Theme: "Awakenings" and "Dreamings" in Aboriginal Cinema

• Awakenings: Lempert’s concept refers to transformations within Indigenous creators as they engage in filmmaking, both literal (e.g., dreams shaping artistic vision) and metaphorical (the social life of films).
  • "Filmmaking could catalyze profound awakenings within its creators." (05:08)
• The Role of the Dreaming: Connects filmmaking to the ‘Dreaming’ (jokoba), a complex Indigenous concept entwining land, law, ancestry, and temporality. Awakening can also be direct—story ideas or clarity arising from dreams.
  • "Mark would go to sleep and talk about the dream that he had, and when he awoke, he had a clarity on the next film project." (10:00)
• Future-Oriented Storytelling: Aboriginal futures are often discussed as “down the track,” suggesting continuity and movement rather than linear Western progression.
  • "The dreaming isn't over. It's still happening. It's still down the track." (12:42, Mark Mora’s nephew, Shorty)

3. The Life and Centrality of Mark Mora

• Profile: Mark Mora—a Kukaja elder, community leader, and filmmaker—anchors much of Lempert’s book and research.
  • "Mark Mora's life story encapsulates a multitude of Aboriginal experiences across time and space..." (15:04)
• Narrative Arc: Details Mora’s journey from pre-settler contact through mission life, land rights activism, and eventual filmmaking acclaim. His story is unique but serves as a bridge among many worlds.
• Ethical Dimensions: Mora’s death during the pandemic deeply affected both the project and Lempert personally. Family encouragement was instrumental in continuing and completing the book and film work.
  • "Of course you should finish this. That was the point. That's why he spent so much time on these projects." (14:50, quote from Mora’s daughter)

4. The Social Life and Structure of Aboriginal Filmmaking

• Production Dynamics: The book’s structure mirrors the stages of film creation—planning, shooting, editing, screening—and highlights the inherently collective, contingent nature of these projects.
  • "What was useful was for me to be saying yes to everything and just following these films around..." (07:05)
• Travel Hazards and Contexts: Field filmmaking involves arduous journeys into remote country, where the greatest hazard is often as prosaic as a tire puncture—but responses to “danger” are deeply contextual and rooted in collective local knowledge.
  • "Tires are the one thing that are by far...the most important in the desert. It's not water or food...it was always tires." (25:10)
  • [Anecdote about being stranded and Indigenous fire signaling for rescue at 26:44]

5. Comedy, Control, and Cultural Value in Filmmaking

• Comedy as Critique and Survival: Humor becomes an important tool for navigating and highlighting the absurdities and contradictions of cross-cultural production—especially where project control or resource access is uneven.
  • "Danger is...so contextual. And a lot of things that I thought were dangerous weren't, but vice versa." (27:30)
• Production Values: Workshops and collective reflection lead to a conscious, culturally grounded approach to aesthetics—challenging mainstream film conventions. Examples include filming at eye-level and prioritizing elder authority and community consensus.
  • "We’d often dig a hole so the camera could remain steady, but would be at eye level..." (36:00)
  • "Balya means good, but...specifically, things are done the right way...a film stopped when it should have and never got made [is] a better outcome." (41:44)

6. Navigating Identity and Positionality as a Researcher

• White Fella Outsider, Media Insider: Lempert details how being American rather than Australian, plus embedding with a beloved Indigenous media organization (PAKAM), shaped access and relationships.
  • "I was in a situation where I was embedded within a group that was beloved...it would be very different if I was coming in with a health organization..." (46:05)
• Naming Practices: A humorous aside on adopting various skin and context-specific names, illustrating the complexity of kinship and naming within community (49:00).
• Graciousness and Creativity: Despite systemic histories of outsider control, Lempert was often met with generosity and a shared enthusiasm for film and media.

7. Positioning Within Anthropological and Indigenous Media Studies

• Moving Beyond Representational Frames: Rather than making ethnographic films himself, Lempert focuses on the social and constitutive power of Indigenous filmmaking as a process and world-building tool.
  • "There really is no need for an anthropologist...to make a documentary because there are so many people making films in such vivid ways..." (54:00)
• Shifting Debates: He engages with, but moves beyond, older anxieties about media “eroding” culture, reframing the issue as one of control and agency.
  • "It’s not the loss of culture argument...it’s the gain of control..." (56:10)
• Cautions Against Oversimplification: Lempert underscores the need to avoid Western binaries about authenticity and modernity, which may misread or flatten the complexity of Indigenous media practice.
  • "Things can fall into purity politics...categories of what it means to be authentic or modern that have little meaning in community context..." (59:06)

8. Looking Ahead: Next Projects

• Future Book -- Outer Space Colonialism: Bridging interests from Native science fiction into broader questions about space, science, and colonial legacies.
• Hand Sign Project: Addressing deafness/disability and gestural language among Aboriginal children.
• Completing "Mangai Calling": The film project with Mark Mora, as a living legacy and a collaborative work to be finalized with his family’s input.
  • "The film is the thing I'm devoted to now...that's the thing that Mark was really engaged in." (64:06)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Process and Place:
  "He could only say the things he needed to say in his country. And the promise of film for him was being able to say the right thing at the right time, most importantly in the right place—the cinema being this sort of portal." (63:10, Lempert on Mark Mora)

• On Production Values:
  "Production values denote a certain set of values...and throughout this entire project, people are articulating and enacting production values that are different and in no way lesser." (37:25)

• On Ethical Research:
  "You spend a decade...try to get it right...but you end up being a student at the end as well." (40:00)

• On Stopping a Film:
  "If an elder says, 'I want to stop, I don’t want to do this,' there isn’t a moment’s hesitation. Everything turns off, packs up—it's over in that moment. That couldn’t be more opposed to...filmmaking in other contexts." (42:08)

Key Timestamps

• Introduction & Lempert’s Backstory: 01:27 – 05:08
• Defining "Awakenings" & "Dreaming": 05:38 – 13:06
• Life of Mark Mora: 13:56 – 21:50
• The Social Life of Film Projects: 23:22 – 24:40
• Hazards, Comedy, & Production: 24:40 – 31:58
• Workshops & Making Production Values Explicit: 32:44 – 39:02
• Cultural Protocols & Authority: 39:52 – 43:30
• Navigating Researcher Identity/Positionality: 44:48 – 51:48
• Anthropological Context/Debates: 51:48 – 60:52
• Upcoming Projects & Final Thoughts: 61:27 – 66:11

Conclusion

The episode offers a rich, nuanced look at how Aboriginal cinema is both a vital cultural practice and an engine for personal, communal, and political transformation. Through deep relationships, ethical engagement, and an openness to being shaped as much as shaping, Lempert documents not just the films made, but the worlds created in, around, and through them.