Kathleen Mary Fallon – December 9 2018

World Genocide Commemoration Day – December 9

Kathleen is a writer and educator. She holds a BA in Psychology and Literature, a Teacher’s Diploma in Special Education, a Masters in Literature and Commerce and a PhD focusing on the Australian South Sea Islander community. She has lectured in creative writing at the University of Melbourne and was a Senior Editor at Allen and Unwin. To put herself through university, Kathleen worked as a nurse/carer in an institution for children with disabilities, where, at the age of 22, she fostered a young Torres Strait Islander boy. This experience informed her three-part project: the novel Paydirt, play Buyback, and feature film Call Me Mum. Of her decision to write Paydirt, Kathleen has said, “… the Stolen Generation information became widely known. ‘Nice’ people went from saying how ‘kind’ and ‘Christian’ I must be to have taken on such a ‘burden’ to contemptuously and self-righteously ‘abusing’ me as supporting a ‘genocidal and racist regime’ …. Within the Stolen Generation narrative, true and necessary though it is, are thousands of smaller, personal stories. And the stories of white foster/adoptive parents are almost non-existent in the cultural landscape. That is one reason I decided to write this novel, ‘Paydirt’.” (‘Perspective’, ABC Radio National, Aug 1 2007) Kathleen’s other writing includes short stories, poetry, reviews and essays for various journals and anthologies; the novel, Working Hot, published under the name Mary Fallon; and the texts for Spill, composed by Ralph Tyrrell, and short film Laquiem: Tales from the Mourning of the Lac Woman, based on her novella, The Mourning of the Lac Women, composed and directed by Andree Greenwell.

Call Me Mum
Commissioned by SBS, produced by Big and Little Films; 2008
79 minutes; Director Margot Nash; Producer Michael McMahon; Composer and Sound Designer David Bridie
Classification: Exempt (Ronin Recommends PG)
Set in the recent past, the AFI award-winning Call Me Mum is a series of interlinked monologues where five characters unravel a complex tale of mothering, race relations and family in Australia. Kate is on a plane taking Warren, her 18 year old Torres Strait Islander foster son, to meet Flo, his birth mother, who is gravely ill in hospital in Brisbane. Flo hasn’t seen Warren since she took him to the hospital on Thursday Island when he was a toddler and the white authorities took him away. But as Warren, Flo and Kate all prepare themselves for the reunion, unbeknown to them, Kate’s Brisbane-based parents, Dellmay and Keith are planning a different kind of reunion.

Matricide: the Musical – Music by Elena Kats-Chernin
Chamber Made Opera /Australia Council; 1998
1 act opera; 75 minutes
Available from www.australianmusiccentre.com.au
A musical treatment of the famous New Zealand murder case (also made into a film, Heavenly Creatures) in which two lovestruck teenage girls bludgeoned to death the mother who sought to separate them. The opera/musical is set in the prison after their conviction, and contains a series of flashbacks which explore the difficult dynamics of mother/daughter relationships and satirises the conservative nature of 1950s society. It is written in an outrageously “high camp” style with explicit sexual content and language.