The first feature film directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman, Tracey Moffat’s debut feature BeDevil was inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child from her extended Aboriginal and Irish Australian family. Moffatt constructs a trilogy in which characters are haunted by the past and bewitched by memories, with all three stories set in her highly stylized, hyper-real, and hyper-imaginary Australian landscape. In the first story Mister Chuck, a young boy is fascinated and terrified by a swamp that is haunted by the ghost of an American GI. Choo Choo Choo Choo finds a family living by railroad tracks haunted by strange happenings. The mother, played by Moffatt, is drawn to the tracks at night as she senses the horror of a past tragedy. The final story, Lovin’ the Spin I’m In, follows a woman who resists eviction attempts by her landlord so she can keep vigil for her dead son. (Tracey Moffatt, 1993, DCP, 90 minutes)

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art