The Bougainville Photoplay Project

Synopsis

Writer, academic and performer Paul Dwyer retraces three journeys made by his father, Dr Allan Dwyer, a world-renowned orthopaedic surgeon, who visited Bougainville during the 1960s, healing dozens of crippled children.

Family stories become entwined with the larger narrative of Australia's colonial enterprise in the years following: the opening of the giant Panguna copper mine, environmental devastation and Bougainvillean resistance, a war that cost the lives of up to 20,000 people.

Since 2004, Paul Dwyer has been making his own journeys to Bougainville, conducting research on the post-war reconciliation process and following the impact of those encounters between his father and the Bougainvillean children.

This is politics and performance at its most personal.